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“Weare charmed with the workmanlike manner in which these manuals 
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A. H. CHARTERIS. 
J. A. M‘CLYMONT. 


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PREFACE 


Tuis Handbook was originally prepared at the request of 
the Life and Work Committee of the Church of Scotland 
as one of a series intended to be used in Guilds and Bible 
Classes. While this was its immediate occasion, a further 
aim of the writer has been to furnish within the smallest 
possible compass what might serve as a basis for oral in- 
struction, or for private study on a more extended scale. 
There are many excellent Handbooks of Christian Evi- 
dences, but none, so far as known to the writer, specially 
suitable for this purpose. His aim has been to condense his 
material as much as possible, so as to embrace a somewhat 
wide range while going sufficiently into detail to illustrate 
all points of importance, and make clear the drift of the main 
argument. The difficulties which beset the task chiefly 
arise from two causes—first, the extent of the subject 
itself, and secondly, the varying circumstances of those 
who are expected to use the book. It was impossible to 
include within the limits assigned even a survey of the 
subject in all its ramifications; and it was, therefore, 
necessary to make a selection of topics. But again, the 
ways of thought characteristic, for example, of young men 
dwelling amidst the busy life of the town, in contact with 
the discussions of the workshop and the office, and ac- 
quainted with the periodical literature of the day in which 
the deepest questions are freely dealt with, are very 
different from those of the inhabitants of the country 


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CONTENTS 


INTRODUCTION 


THE NATURE AND VALUE OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


CHAPTER I 


Gop AND RELIGION . 


CHAP TEs fl 
Part I 


ANTITHEISTIC THEORIES 


GHAPTER IL 
Part II 


SCIENCE AND RELIGION 


CHAPTER. HI 


REVELATION . 


CHAPTER IV 


MIRACLES 


PAGE 


ik 


18 


25 


38 


46 


xii HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


CHAPTER V 


PERSONALITY AND CHARACTER OF CHRIST 


CHAPTER VI 


THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST 


CHAPTER YII 


THE LEADING PRINCIPLES OF CHRISTIANITY, DOCTRINAL 
AND ETHICAL 


CHAPTER VIII 


THE EFFECTS AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF CHRISTIANITY IN 
THE WoRLD 


CHAPTER IX 


CUMULATIVE EFFECT OF THE CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


NovTES 
Books RECOMMENDED 


INDEX 


PAGE 


ad 


of 


66 


~I 
Or 


87 


98 


111 
151 


155 


HANDBOOK 


OF 


CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


INTRODUCTION 
THE NATURE AND VALUE OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


1. CHRISTIANITY has always had to encounter 
opposition, and Christians must be prepared to 
justify to themselves and others what they accept 
and believe. 

2. The replies to the attacks upon Christianity 
which have come from Jews and Heathen, from the 
side of philosophy as well as that of science, have 
usually been called Apologies—* apology ” here, how- 
ever, meaning “ defence,” not “excuse.” 

5. Christianity has been understood and _ pre- 
sented under various aspects and with various 
modifications from the days of Christ to our own 
day, but has remained substantially the same, and 
of a character sufficiently distinctive to be readily 
and generally recognised. 

4. The Christian apologist may set himself to 

I 


2 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


meet special modes of attack, but in so far as he 
does so his work is apt to be of only temporary 
value. 3 

5. The Christian apologist may lay the whole 
weight of his argument upon the establishment of 
some special point, such as Miracle, Inspiration, or 
the Moral Character of Christianity, but this course 
has the drawback that any modification of view 
upon the point selected is apt to create alarm 
among those who had deemed it secure, and in 
any case leads to continual reconstruction of the 
argument. 

6. It is better, therefore, to supplement either of 
these methods by a general view of several lines 
of evidence which shall form a connected series, 
and be mutually supporting. 

7. The evidences of Christianity do not claim 
to be demonstrative, but to have a high degree of 
probability, as high as in the case of other principles 
which determine human action. 

8. In conducting the argument we must be on 
our guard against the influence of bias or pre- 
possession. 


1. From the time of its first introduction Christianity 
has been exposed to misunderstanding, misrepresentation, 
criticism, and assault from many quarters and on diverse 
grounds. It has consequently been under the necessity 
from time to time of explaining and justifying its position 
and claims, both by setting forth its true character and 
by rebutting the objections which have been brought 
against it. The question, “Why should we believe?” 
is a natural and legitimate one. Faith may be called 
forth instinctively when the object of faith is presented 


INTRODUCTION 3 


to our minds, but it cannot long continue without in- 
quiring as to the grounds of its existence, without 
seeking a reason for the assurance it brings. Still more, 
when an attempt is made to persuade others to adopt 
the same views and accept the same principles as those 
which have commended themselves to us, it becomes 
necessary to be able to give a ‘‘reason for the hope that 
is in us.” We may not be-able to explain everything. 
Faith implies that we are prepared to act upon more 
than we absolutely know, or can rigorously prove. But 
into every ground of action, and especially into a matter 
so complex as the Christian faith, there enters much 
which is a proper subject of proof, which can be com- 
mended to the mind by argument and evidence. And 
when we consider the difficulties which suggest them- 
selves to the earnest seeker after truth, or are urged 
by those who are openly opposed to Christianity or 
only half convinced of its value and importance, we see 
the necessity and advantage of stating as clearly, and 
supporting as strongly as we can, the reasons on which 
Christianity bases its claims to the allegiance of. men. 

2. The earliest attacks upon Christianity came from 
the side of the Jews, who naturally resented the important 
differences which divided the Church from the Synagogue, 
especially the Messiahship of Jesus and the attitude of 
Christians to the Mosaic Law. Then followed the 
attempts of heathen philosophers and rulers to undermine 
Christianity by argument, to overwhelm it with ridicule, 
and to extinguish it by persecution. ‘The treatises which 
were written in answer to these attacks upon the new 
religion received the name of ‘ Apologies,” that is 
“defences,” from which the general subject of Christian 
Evidences has come to be known as Apologetics.' It is 


1 See Note I. ‘‘ Apology” and ** Apologetics” ; also Note II, 
History of Apologetics. f 


4 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


important, however, to notice that in this use of the 
word “apology,” there is nothing implied of the nature 
of excuse, no admission of inferiority or blameworthiness. 
From the time of the Apologies just mentioned to the 
present day, the assaults have been many, sometimes 
affecting Christianity as a whole, sometimes particular 
parts or aspects of it; but the champions of the Faith 
have also not been few. Prominent among the contests 
which have been waged was that with the English Deism 
of last century, which gave occasion for such a noble 
monument of Christian philosophy as Bishop Butler’s 
Analogy of Religion to the Constitution and Course of 
Nature. This Deism, in many of its features, has been 
revived in the Rationalism of the present day. The 
great problem of to-day is, however, the reconciliation 
of Christianity and Science, or rather, the adjustment 
of their relations, so that all that is essential and 
distinctive in Christianity may be preserved, while the 
authority of Science in its legitimate sphere, and so 
far as its methods are applicable, is not disturbed or 
disputed. 

3. At this point the question may not unfairly be 
raised as to how far Christianity has remained the same 
under all these attacks, how far through the long course 
of ages and through all the vicissitudes of its history, it 
has preserved its identity. Is the religion which we hold 
under this name one with that which was defended 
against the Sceptics of last century, one with that of the 
Reformers, with that of the early Church, with that of 
the Apostles, with the doctrine of the Master himself ? 
It is evident that there are respects in which it is not 
the same, respects in which it has been altered and 
modified, developed and expanded, in which it has re- 
ceived an infusion of alien elements which have not only 
changed to some extent its outward appearance but have 


— 


INTRODUCTION 5 


deprived it of spiritual power. The assaults which have 
been made upon Christianity have not left it uninfluenced, 
for they often derived their strength from some element 
of forgotten or neglected truth which they represented, 
and by the recognition and absorption of which Christianity 
has been enabled to overcome them. But, notwithstanding 
all this, Christianity is in substance and essence the same 
throughout. The leading views and doctrines regarding 
God, man, and the world, are practically unchanged ; 
the historical relation of the Christian religion to the 
Person of Christ and to the Scriptures has formed a 
bond of union between believers of successive generations ; 
and the Christian ideal, the Christian spirit, and the life 
which these inspire and guide, are of a character so 
distinctive that they are recognised at once in whatever 
special circumstances or associations they may be mani- 
fested. The Christianity of our own day appears in very 
many forms, according as it is influenced by individual, 
social, national, or Church peculiarities ; yet though it 
might be difficult to draw the line at every point between 
the Christian and the non-Christian, we have a fairly 
distinct notion of what Christianity is apart from all such 
peculiarities, and do not allow an occasional difficulty 
in applying the distinction to cause us to doubt for a 
moment that it exists. As the life of the plant is the 
same as the life of the seed, as the life of the man is the 
development of that of the child, so, through all its 
progress and the variety of experience through which it 
has passed, Christianity preserves its identity, and that 
which we maintain and defend under this name to-day 
is in all essential features that which the first Apologists 
set themselves to uphold. 

4, In dealing with the evidences of Chivebianiiy it might 
be expedient for the Christian advocate to keep in view 
certain special modes of attack. These modes have varied, 


6 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


as we have seen, in different ages. Each generation has 
its own difficulties, and its sceptics develop their assault 
from their own peculiar standpoint. It is obvious that we 
should uselessly expend our strength in meeting objections 
which no one now urges. It is obvious also that it would 
be equally useless to base an argument upon a proposition 
which our opponents would at once dispute or deny. Much 
good service has accordingly been rendered by writers who 
have devoted themselves to the treatment of a particular 
subject which may be attracting attention, or to the 
examination of the views of an individual thinker, or 
class of thinkers. By starting from some common ground, 
or from principles of such a nature that when once clearly 
understood they are generally admitted, such writers 
endeavour to show the untenable character of the position 
occupied by their opponents. Those who experience 
difficulties in regard to special points of Christian belief 
must always be indebted to writers of this class. It is 
evident, however, that the special aim of such work involves 
a certain danger, arising out of its limitation. Controversy 
is apt to degenerate into petty criticism. An argument 
valid as against an objection presented in a certain form 
may be useless as against the same objection more pro- 
foundly apprehended or more ingeniously stated. Works 
dealing with current difficulties are of real value only 
when they get beneath the temporary purpose, the surface 
controversy, to the broad principles, the eternal truths, 
by the test of which all that calls itself Christian must 
ultimately be tried. Besides, as we shall see hereafter, 
Christianity is a system whose parts mutually uphold 
each other; it is supported not by one argument but by 
the convergence of many; and difficulties which loom 
largely when they are separately considered, lose much of 
their force when the points affected are viewed in their due 
proportion and in their relation to the general scheme. 


INTRODUCTION 7 


5. Again, there is a method of exhibiting the evidence 
of Christianity which consists not so much in the attempt 
to meet a special form of attack, as in the selection of a 
special position in defence of the Faith, and the concentra- 
tion of energy for the purpose of securing and maintaining 
the point thus selected. Many of the positions which it. 
has thus been sought to make good are of prime importance, 
and so long as they can be firmly held their maintenance 
is practically decisive of the conflict. Thus Paley, in his 
well-known work, chose to rest the question of the truth 
or falsity of Christianity upon the credibility of the evidence 
for the Christian miracles. If men, he argued, were found 
willing to suffer and die in attestation of their belief in a 
miraculous history, we have the highest degree of proba- 
bility that the history was as true as it was marvellous. 
Paley looked upon the other lines of evidence in favour 
of Christianity as auxiliary to this, his main argument ; 
such, for example, as Prophecy, the Morality of the Gospel, 
and the Character of Christ. Other writers, again, select 
the Inspiration of Scripture, the Authority of the Church, 
or the Resurrection of Christ as the citadel which they are 
bound at all hazards to maintain, believing that if these 
or similar truths can be reasonably established, they involve 
the truth of the whole Christian system. Others regard 
the key of the position as lying rather in the Internal 
Evidences of Christianity, those which appeal to the moral 
nature of man, arguing, not without justice, that it is the 
moral elevation of Christianity,—especially the character 
of Christ,—and its adaptation to human needs, which 
leads us to accept the Christian revelation as a revelation 
from God,—that Miracles are believed in because of their 
association with, and suitableness to, a system of so lofty 
a character, and are therefore not first but second in the 
order of importance as evidences, confirming rather than 
proving the divine nature of the religion. Here again the 


8 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


objection stated in the last paragraph applies. While 
there is undeniable advantage in concentrating our forces 
upon a single point, the danger is great that any weakness 
made apparent here may give rise to the apprehension 
that all is lost. If the truth of Christianity is staked 
upon the possibility of maintaining any single point, how- 
ever important, this may lead to an exaggeration of state- 
ment which when found not to be fully borne out provokes 
a reaction, and a panic ensues. There are traces of this 
in the circumstances which have led to the change of front 
among modern apologists, by which the position of Paley 
has been abandoned and miracles are defended on the 
ground of the religion rather than the religion on the 
ground of miracles. And it is still more apparent in the 
fact that so many are perplexed and dismayed at the 
critical conclusions in reference to the Scriptures which 
believing scholars of the highest character have declared 
to be irresistible. Such fears are only to be expected 
among those whose faith has been bound up with a rigid 
theory of Biblical inspiration and authority, any modifica- 
tion of which seems to threaten the stability of the 
whole. 

6. Both, therefore, in regard to points of attack and 
attitudes of defence it may be said that as these are always 
changing with the varying fortunes of the battle, it is well 
to unite with the most strenuous efforts to resist the one 
and maintain the other, that calmness of mind and sense 
of security, which can only come from a somewhat more 
general survey of the issues at stake. If we have a general 
understanding of the nature and historical position of 
Christianity and its relation to the rival theories which 
dispute with it the right to explain the world of experience 
and guide the conduct of men, we shall be less alarmed at 
an assault which only involves a small portion of the circle 
of our beliefs, and we shall be less concerned if our attitude 


INTRODUCTION 9 


of defence requires in some point or other to be modified. 
It is our purpose in this little manual to indicate a series 
of evidences which shall bring into view the more important 
features of Christianity, illustrate its nature and value as 
a religious system, and exhibit its claims upon the attention 
and the allegiance of men. Such points are the Nature of © 
Religion, the Existence of God, Revelation and Miracles, the 
Person, Character, and Resurrection of Christ,—Christian 
teaching, and its influence and adaptation to human need. 
A survey of this kind must either commend or condemn 
the system to which it refers,—each line of proof having 
much to be advanced in its support, and all together 
forming a cord of many strands which shall not be easily 
broken. 

7. It is necessary to observe that the argument in favour 
of Christianity does not claim to be demonstrative. This 
should be evident, but misunderstanding is common upon 
the point. The argument does not compel belief, it does 
not, like a mathematical proposition, make its truth 
apparent to all who understand what the words mean. 
It must not be supposed, however, that the admission 
that the argument is not demonstrative is equivalent to 
an admission that it is weak. Evidence may be probable 
evidence only, and yet be of any degree of strength. It 
may reach the highest moral certainty, though of course 
it may extend no further than the merest presumption. 
Probability is our guide in all the affairs of life. The 
grounds on which we accept statements which we have 
not personally investigated—historical or geographical 
statements, for example—those by which business trans- 
actions involving immense amounts of money, and social 
relations involving the happiness and welfare of families, 
are rendered possible, are such that we can only claim for 
them extreme likelihood. It is no fatal defect, therefore, 
in the evidences of religion that they appeal to the same 


10 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


faculty of judgment which we bring to bear upon life in 
general. 

8. A word ought also to be said about the influence 
of bias or prepossession in dealing with such evidences as 
those just mentioned. Our minds are instruments which 
habit may render capable of acting only in certain 
directions. There are fashions in thought as there are 
fashions in dress; there is an intellectual atmosphere, a 
spirit of the age, in which alone men seem able to live 
and move.! The literary man has no liking for the severity 
of a scientific demonstration, the man of science cannot 
recognise the force of that which does not conform to his 
rules of inquiry. Methods learned in one field are applied 
to truths belonging to another, and facts are overlooked 
or rejected for want of the eye habituated to perceive 
them, or the appropriate skill to put them to the test.? 
We must be careful, therefore, in judging of the claims of 
Christianity to put them to the right kind of proof, not to 
ask from them what they cannot fairly be expected to 
supply, to remember that our reason may be already 
possessed by ideas, which lead us to reject or question 
those now claiming acceptance, but which themselves are 
based on evidence of a precisely similar character and of 
no greater degree of force. 


1 See Note III. The Psychological Atmosphere. 
2 See Note IV. Bias or Prepossession. 


CHeaP iin. i 
GOD AND RELIGION 


1. THE starting point for the study of the Christian 
Kvidences must be a conviction of the existence of 
God, and of the reality and power of religion. 
When these truths are denied, or only vaguely held, 
the special proofs on behalf of Christianity lose 
their force; but where they are admitted, these 
special proofs at once acquire a high degree of 
probability. 

2. Religion is a universal phenomenon of human 
experience and history. Its universality shows 
that it is natural to man and corresponds to a 
universally felt need. 

3. The object of religion assumes a great variety 
of forms ranging from Fetichism to Theism, and a 
complete treatment of this subject would involve an 
examination of all forms of the Belief in God, so 
that we might form an estimate of their comparative 
worthiness and adequacy. 

4, Though it is not by argument we obtain our 
conviction of the existence of God, formal argu- 
ments in support of this conclusion are not useless, 
and merely go over again, with scientific precision, 


12 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


the course pursued by popular and ordinary thought. 
The four forms in which the argument for the 
existence of God has usually been presented are not 
independent proofs, but supplement one another. 

(1) The first leads to the thought of the 
great Cause of all things. As we, and every- 
thing else that we know of, have come into 
existence, and as we can think of nothing coming 
into existence without a cause, we conclude that 
we must either go back from cause to cause in an 
unending series, or must rest in a First Cause, a 
self-existent Being. It is held that the latter 1s 
more reasonable than the former. 

(2) The second form of the argument leads to 
the thought of an intelligent Author of the world, 
One who adapts means to ends, and leaves upon His 
work the marks of design and purpose. As we 
eulide owr action by an already formed idea of what 
we are to do, and as we infer the existence of such 
a purpose in others from the attainment of an end 
through the combination of means unlikely to act 
together unless intelligently combined ; so the order 
of the world as a whole, and in the multitude of its 
parts, exhibits to such an extent the appearances 
which we associate with intelligence, that it is 
more rational to believe in this explanation of it 
than to regard it as self-caused or the result of 
chance. | 

(3) The third argument rests upon the conviction 
which the very constitution of our minds seems to 
impress upon us, that the thought of God is that of 
a Being who must exist,—that it is impossible to 


i 


GOD AND RELIGION 13 


regard the thought of a perfect Being as a mere 
thought. 

(4) The fourth areument leads us from our sense 
of moral responsibility to infer the existence of a 
Being to whom we are responsible, and who is 
Himself a personal and moral Being. 


1. Some writers upon Christian Evidences take for 
granted a belief in the existence of God and the more 
general facts of religious experience, and confine them- 
selves to the special claims of Christianity as the highest, 
purest, and best authenticated form of religion. When, 
however, so much depends, as we have seen, upon the 
general impression made upon the reader’s mind, it seems 
better to build from the foundation, and to exhibit, how- 
ever imperfectly, the nature of the foundation on which 
we build. The special evidences of the Christian faith 
will be more clearly understood if we have clear notions 
on the subject of God and Religion ; and when any scepti- 
cism enters in regard to the former, it rarely stops short of 
affecting the latter. If Religion cannot be ignored, 
dispensed with, or explained away, the question as regards 
Christianity is narrowed into this, Which is the highest 
and best religion? which agrees best with all we know of 
the world and of man? For it is evident that if a 
satisfactory case cannot be presented for Religion in 
general, it is almost useless and superfluous to contend 
for any particular form of it. 

2. In modern times the fact of the universal prevalence 
of Religion has been questioned, but without success 
(see Flint, Antitherstic Theories, Lecture VII. and Notes 
xxv.-xxxi.) Even if a genuine case of a purely atheistic 
people could be produced, it would scarcely lessen the 
significance of the general rule. The existence of cripples 
doés not affect our conclusion as to what is the normal 


14 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


constitution of the human body. Religion is universal, 
and we claim therefore that it rests upon a principle or 
principles inherent in man’s nature, forming part of 
his very being.! The tendency is there, and though the 
diversity of forms which Religion assumes forbids us. to 
conclude that anything more is originally given, this 
diversity of form does not hinder us from recognising the 
common character maintained throughout. The following 
may be cited as definitions of Religion in its most general 
aspect. Canon Liddon - “ Religion consists fundamentally 
in the practical recognition of a constraining bond between 
the inward life of man and an unseen Person.” Professor 
Flint; ‘Religion is man’s belief in a being or beings 
mightier than himself and inaccessible to his senses, 
but not indifferent to his sentiments and actions, with the 
feelings and practices which flow from such belief.” Dr. 
Martineau: “ Belief in an ever-living God, that is, in a 
Divine Mind and Will ruling the Universe and holding 
Moral relations with mankind.” Professor Max Miiller : 
‘The perception of the infinite under such manifestations 
as are able to influence the moral character of man.” 
Our earthly life owes to religion its highest and most 
complete development, and no power has a greater 
influence on the prosperity or decadence of nations.2 The 
attempts which have been made to dispense with it, or 
to supersede it by philosophy or science, have not been, 
and do not appear likely to be, successful. As examples 
of such attempts reference may be made to the following : 
(a) Buddhism in its original form attempted to dispense 
with an object of worship ; it was an atheistic system ; but 
after Buddha’s death he himself received adoration as 
divine. (6) Comte, the French philosopher, began by 
denouncing Religion as a delusion, whose place was to be 


1 See Note V. Universality of Religion. 
2 See Note VI. Religion and Nationality. 


GOD AND RELIGION 15 


taken by the philosophy he taught; but he ended by 
adding to his philosophy a new religion, with services of 
its own, consisting in the worship of humanity, and the 
adoration even of individuals in whom humanity was held 
to be personified. (c) Philosophy had its opportunity in 
the ancient world. Whatever philosophy or art could do — 
for man was done in the ages before Christ, and its 
inadequacy as a substitute for religion is seen in the 
festering corruption of the Roman world. (d) John 
Stuart Mill may be taken as an example of the scientific 
spirit. His biography shows how little can be done by 
Science for man’s spiritual wants, and how the void caused 
by the absence of Religion may be less worthily filled up.! 
3. If, then, religion cannot be done away with, there 
remains only to determine which form of it has been 
found to afford the most satisfactory theory of the world 
and the best guide of life,—to be most consonant with 
the circumstances, and most suitable to the needs of man. 
We find that the forms which the idea of God has assumed 
range from the gross Fetichism of the interior of Africa 
or of Australia to the pure Theism of Christianity. Even 
Fetichism involves a belief in supernatural power, in 
fate and mystery, and in spirits of good and evil. In 
Egypt, India, and Greece we have a popular Polytheism 
side by side with a higher ethical and intellectual doctrine, 
tending to Pantheism. Israel is the first example of a 
Monotheistic nation.2 From Israel the Christian idea of 
God was derived, with modifications peculiar to itself, 
The doctrine of Christian Theism—‘“ that the universe 
owes its existence, and continuance in existence, to the 
reason and will of a self-existent Being, who is infinitely 
powerful, wise, and good; that Nature has a Creator 
and Preserver, the nations a Governor, men a Heavenly 


1 See Note VII. Substitutes for Religion. 
2 See Note VIII. . Religion of Israel. 


16 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


Father and Judge” !—-commends itself, on a survey of 
history, as the highest and worthiest conception of God, 
infringing at no point what is perceived to be the true 
relation to each other of God, man, and nature, and at 
the same time satisfying the religious aspirations and the 
devotional sentiments of the human soul. 

4. The religious man has, altogether apart from any 
scientific inquiry into the question, a firm persuasion of 
the existence and the perfections of God; and for any 
confirmation of his faith he relies, not on logical demon- 
stration, but on the witness of the Church, the testimony 
of Scripture, and the common consent of those whose 
character has won his respect. His persuasion is of the 
nature of a verified experiment. In some way he has 
begun with a belief in God, and has found it the suitable 
and indispensable basis of a religious life, the reality and 
practical efficiency of which is to him a demonstration of 
the truth of that in which he has believed. But how did 
he come to start with this belief? Partly, no doubt, from 
tradition ; it is a belief in which he has been educated, 
with which he had become familiarised before adopting it 
as the guiding principle of his own life—but partly also 
from that vague, popular, almost unconscious perception 
of the grounds of the belief, which it is the business of 
Science to analyse and set forth in more precise form. 
Scientific inquiry does carefully—seeking to remove all 
chance of mistake—what popular’ thought in such a 
matter does rapidly, it may be inaccurately, and by a sort 
of intuition. It may not be necessary for each of us in- 
dividually, but it is undoubtedly of advantage, to search 
out the deepest questions in this full and accurate way. 
And it is no true piety, no conviction sure of itself, which 
shrinks from trying to account for its faith, from desiring 
to know the why and wherefore of that faith. 

1 Professor Flint: Theism, p. 18. 


GOD AND RELIGION 17 


Merely the leading principle of each argument is in- 
dicated here as simply and briefly as possible. 

The third argument is that which is most abstruse in 
its character, and can hardly be made intelligible to those 
who have not received a training in philosophy. For 
such, however, it will have considerable force. The most 
popular form of the argument is undoubtedly that placed 
second, known as the Argument from, or rather to, Design. 
It is susceptible of an endless variety of illustration. All 
departments of nature exhibit order, and therefore mani- 
fest intelligence ; they speak as it were from the ordering 
Mind to the mind perceiving that order, from the Spirit 
in and above nature to the spirit in man. Hardly in- 
ferior to this in interest, and appreciable by all who reflect 
on this important subject, is the fourth or Moral Argu- 
ment. Our moral life is built up of two elements or 
principles, Duty or Obligation, and Liberty. We ought 
to obey the law made known to us; we are free to disobey 
it if we will. Without the power of determination man is 
subject to a mechanical law; without the sense of obliga- 
tion his free will is but caprice. Whence comes, then, the 
feeling of responsibility? To whom are we responsible ? 
Our consciences witness to the law, and to the Author of 
the law. Our intellectual and moral activity find their 
explanation, their ground, their unity in God. God has 
Himself an Ethical character. He is a Person, the God at 
once of conscience and of nature. 


1 See Note IX. Argument from the Necessity of Thought. 


CHAPTER AL 
Part | 


ANTITHEISTIC THEORIES 


1. Ir the belief in God as a self-existent personal 
Being, who is infinitely powerful, wise, and good, be 
rejected, we must choose among the rival theories of 
the universe, of which at the present day the chief 
are Materialism, Pantheism, and Agnosticism. 

(1) Materialism is the doctrine that mind— 
that is, conscious and inteligent agency——had 
nothing to do with the formation or arrangement of 
the universe; that, on the contrary, mind is the 
result or function of certain combinations of material 
atoms, and is related to the nervous system as 
chemical or electrical qualities to the substances 
which exhibit them. Materialism is not a body of 
ascertained scientific facts and laws, but a system 
of scientific speculation. It has not arrived at a 
definite conclusion as to the ultimate constitution 
of matter, and has failed to explain the origin of 
life, or how the transition is effected from the stimu- 
lated nerve to conscious sensation or perception. 
It affords no basis for moral distinctions, and denies 
moral freedom. 


ANTITHEISTIC THEORIES 19 


(2) Pantheism resolves the universe into one 
principle, which is called God, but is impersonal, 
and only attains consciousness in man. In nature 
it is only a blind force. Pantheism contradicts the 
testimony of consciousness as to personal existence, 
and abolishes the religious relation, as well as moral 
distinctions and freedom. 

(3) Agnosticism is the name by which those 
designate their position who do not deny the exist- 
ence of God, the future world, and other doctrines 
of religion, but declare that we do not, and cannot, 
know anything about these subjects, and should 
therefore leave them out of account. ‘The truth in 
Agnosticism is that man’s knowledge of God and of 
heavenly things, is, though real, imperfect and in- 
adequate. We know God, but we do not know all 
that He is. Agnosticism is related on its scientific 
side to Positivism, which confines knowledge to the 
facts of which we are directly conscious, especially 
the impressions made upon the senses; and on its 
practical side to Secularism, which would have us 
concentrate all our attention on this present life as 
the only real and important matter for us. Agnos- 
ticism, as distinguished from temporary suspense of 
judgment, is an untenable compromise. 

(a) Its great advocate’ is himself inconsistent 
when he declares that we must recognise the exist- 
ence of a power which “ works in us certain effects,” 
but of which “the nature remains for ever inconceiv- 
able.” If we know that such a power exists, we 
may know something more about it, and if it works 
upon us, we can surely infer something as to its nature. 

1 Herbert Spencer. 


20 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


(b) Agnosticism is less distrust of knowledge than 
of certain modes of arriving at knowledge—for 
example, inference—which are yet employed in the 
sphere of knowledge which the Agnostic recognises 
(e.g. Physical Science). 

(c) Agnosticism appears as if requiring a difter- 
ent kind of knowledge in regard to those points it 
rejects from that which satisfies it in the case of 
ordinary experience ; but if the one knowledge be 
as real and certain as the other, it is all we need 
for practical purposes. Because we do not know 
anything of God in those respects in which he 
cannot stand in any relation to us and to our 
destiny, we need not reject the knowledge which 
we have of Him where He does stand in such 
relation to us. 

(qd) Agnosticism defeats itself, as, on its prin- 
ciples, knowledge of anything beyond the conscious- 
ness of the present moment may be shown to be 
untrustworthy. 


1. It is worthy of note that the rejection of Theism 
(v.e. of the belief in God) implies the acceptance of some 
other explanation of the universe. We cannot maintain 
a merely negative attitude. Besides, therefore, the 
positive proofs which are offered for the belief in God, 
we have to take into account the difficulties presented 
by the rival theories. Of these the most prevalent in 
the present day are Materialism, Pantheism, and Agnos- 
ticism, though the last is less a theory than an attempt 
to dispense with any definite theory. With regard to 
the first, it must be admitted that if there is no spirit 
within man, there can be no evidence of spirit without 
him; religion is the communion of soul with soul; 


— 


ANTITHEISTIC THEORIES 21 


revelation is the unveiling of mind to mind. If every- 
thing in man, therefore, can be accounted for by a 
reference to the physical organism, the great support of 
the Theistic view, and nearly all its value, are taken away. 
The question is, as Plato put it long ago, Is the relation 
of the soul to the body that of the harper to the harp, or 
that of the melody to the harp, so that when the instru- 
ment is broken the melody for ever ceases? It is well to 
remember that Materialism seeks its support from physical 
science, though it is not identical with it. We may fairly 
claim that the facts of science are as compatible with a 
spiritualistic as with a materialistic explanation of them. 
Materialism is not science but philosophical speculation. 
The points where even as a theory it is incomplete have 
been indicated above. Panthersm may be materialistic, 
but it is not necessarily so. It may recognise a spirit-life 
at the foundation of all things, but it denies that this 
principle of the world is conscious or personal. Historically 
it has not infrequently issued in the view of those who 
hold life to be not worth living, as full of discontent and 
misery. Agnosticism seems to commend itself by the very 
modesty, even humility, of the position it takes up. But 
it is a half-way house in which no true rest can be found, 
Men may hold their minds in balance for a while, and do 
so because there are so many interests and occupations 
with which they can fill them. But when a sense of the 
reality and the responsibility of life comes upon them, 
they demand some more positive answer, they ask either 
certainty, or on which side lies the greater degree of 
probability. The intellect instinctively asks concerning 
the Whence and How of what it sees. The heart is 
conscious of a law, of the voice of duty. - Both intellect 
and heart unite in the search after God and seek to solve 
the problem as to His existence. The Agnostic recognises 
the facts of nature and the duties of life: of these he 


22 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


admits we have a knowledge sufficient for all practical 
purposes, though even here there are deep problems which 
remain unsolved; but because he cannot solve all deep 
problems with regard to God, he will not admit that we 
have even a practical knowledge of Him, a knowledge to 
be gained by inference from the facts of nature and the 
constitution of man, even if we leave that given by 
Revelation out of account. Agnosticism is thus essentially 
inconsistent and untenable whenever it goes beyond the 
declaration that there is much in relation to God which 
our intellects cannot apprehend— 


‘‘Nay, we see but a part of God, since we gaze with a finite sight ; 
And yet not Darkness is He, but a blinding splendour of light. 


‘Do we shrink from this light, and let our dazzled eyeballs fall ? 
Nay ! a God fully known, or utterly dark, were not God at all.” 


CA Pel Rec 
PART LI 


SCIENCE AND RELIGION 


1. THE Antitheistic Theories, discussed in the last 
chapter, derive their special force for the intellect 
of the present day from their association with 
Physical Science, its methods and results. 

2. The Reign of Law discerned in physical 
phenomena is claimed by many as extending to 
mental and social phenomena, and so as pointing to 
one ultimate basis of existence, which may be 
material (Materialism), or spiritual (Pantheism), or 
of a nature which cannot be known or described 
(Agnosticism). Upon this basis, the world, as we 
know it, is said to have come into being by a 
process of Evolution, the more complex proceeding 
from simpler forms of existence. 

3. Evolution may describe the mode, but does 
not indicate the cause of Creation. 

4. As Physical Science has been pursued and 
developed, it has at various points been used by 
the opponents of Religion and Christianity to 
discredit these, and has also been opposed by the 
advocates of the latter, in the conviction that its 
conclusions were irreconcilable with the conceptions 


24 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


of the world which were believed to be essential to 
Religion and laid down by Divine authority. 

5. The readiness of many scientific men to 
attack Christianity is largely a reaction against 
the way in which the representatives of Philosophy 
and Theology used the powers they possessed in 
opposing the progress of scientific investigation. 

6. The position thus assumed by Theologians, 
while in some ways to be regretted, was a natural 
and intelligible one, and deserving rather of 
sympathy than of unsparing condemnation, in so 
far as it sprang from loyalty to truth which was 
believed to be imperilled. 

7. It does not follow that because many points 
have been surrendered which were formerly main- 
tained, every claim in the name of Science is to be 
allowed without strict examination. 

8. Physical Science is systematised sense-know- 
ledge, and its sphere is therefore restricted, while 
its methods are not universally applicable. 

9,. Religion may be the means of purifying the 
ideas with which it comes into contact, but has no 
claim to exercise authority within the domain of 
Science. 

10. Authorities in Science are not necessarily 
authorities in matters of Religion. 

11. It is noteworthy that Physical Science has 
attained its greatest successes in Christian countries, 
and among its most distinguished cultivators have 
been many who have adhered to Christianity. 

12. It may be expected, therefore, that with the 
disappearance of unreasoning distrust on the part 


SCIENCE AND RELIGION 25 


of religious men, and of the prejudice due to 
reaction, on the part of scientific men, a_ better 
understanding of the questions at issue will be 
arrived at, and it will be seen that Religion, as an 
ineradicable fact of human nature, with all that it 
implies, is compatible with all that Science is 
capable of teaching as to the world we live in. 


1-3. The object in view in the present chapter is a 
comparatively simple one. It is not proposed to attempt 
the solution of any scientific problem from the point of 
view of religion, or even the delimitation of the respective 
spheres of Science and Religion. Our purpose is rather 
to indicate the attitude which the religious apologist is 
entitled to take up with reference to the questions which 
have been raised in the name of Science, especially its 
right to bar his further progress at this point, and to 
throw its powerful influence into the scale in favour of 
the antitheistic position. We need not ignore the fact 
that much disquietude has prevailed on this subject. To 
many the two views, the scientific and the religious, appear 
antagonistic, so much so that adherence to the one means 
the inevitable abandonment of the other. This may in- 
deed be called the great, the peculiar, difficulty which 
Christianity has in our day to face. Science so fills the 
air, 1ts methods are becoming so well known, and its results 
so approve themselves by the tangible benefits which they 
confer upon mankind that it cannot be wondered at that 
anything unprovable by its methods, or apparently in- 
consistent with its deliverances, should at once in many 
quarters be held as thereby condemned, or at least be 
viewed with grave, even if at the same time unwelcome, 
suspicion.! 


1 ““Physical Science is felt to have conferred such benefits upon 
mankind, and to have so widely extended our knowledge of the 


26 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


There can be little doubt that the theories discussed in 
the last chapter derive no small part of their influence 
from their association with Physical Science. The latter 
exemplifies through the whole range of its phenomena the 
workings of Law, one, uniform, invariable. It has given 
to the conception of Law a meaning and force never before 
perceived. Not only are its operations found in each 
department of Nature’s great kingdom, but they bear 
towards each other an invariable relation, so that the 
various departments are seen to belong to one great system, 
suggesting a unity of principle at the foundation of the 
whole, one ultimate basis of existence. If, as is claimed 
by many, this reign of Law could be proved to extend to 
mental and social phenomena, so that these also exhibit 
uniformities of the same kind, standing in a relation 
of correspondence with those of the physical world, the 
inference drawn by the opponents of religion would 
have much in its favour. It is true that Theism also 
depends largely upon the unity of nature as indicat- 
ing the unity of the Author of Nature, as well as His 
wisdom and His power. Every fact which the Antitheist 
can adduce as showing that the universe is self-subsistent 
and self-sustaining, the Theist includes as an evidence of 
the Divine plan, of which Nature is the realisation. The 
difference lies in the character attributed to Law in the two 
modes of conceiving it. According to the one, Law is 
uniform, necessary, all-pervading, of one kind throughout, in- 
calculable, where it is so, only through its complexity, point- 
ing to a principle of existence which need not be intelligent, 
and certainly is not free! The other conception of Law 


universe, that in every succeeding generation an increasing number of 
persons feel impatient of any theory which appears in any way to 
come into collision with it, or to deny what it seems necessary for it 
to assume.”— Kennedy, Natural Theology and Modern Thought, 
p. 90. See Note X. Naturalism. 

' See Note XI. The Oonfession of Fuith of a Man of Science. 


SCIENCE AND RELIGION 2 


distinguishes between physical and moral laws, recognises 
intelligence and freedom as characteristic of its ultimate 
principle, and while admitting every fact of science, claims 
also to include facts of the greatest significance, which upon 
the other hypothesis must be either ignored or explained 
away. ‘The basis of existence according to the Antitheist 
may be, as we have seen, material (Materialism), or of a 
spiritual or semi-spiritual character (Pantheism), or of a 
nature which cannot be known or described (Agnosticism). 
But upon this basis, however it may be conceived, the world 
as we know it is said to. have come into being by a process 
of Evolution, the more complex proceeding from simpler 
forms of existence. What is true in the doctrine of 
Evolution, is, however, compatible with the Theistic as 
well as with the Antitheistic view. Evolution, as has 
been frequently pointed out,' is a theory not of the 
cause, but of the mode of creation. The originating 
principle of the universe may be God or matter. Evolution 
is the mode of operation of either cause or source of 
being, in giving rise to the forms of being which 
successively appear. It is true that the character of 
the process must be conceived of strictly in accordance 
with the nature of the cause assumed. If the latter be a 
necessary cause, materialistic or pantheistic, the whole 
process of development will bear the character of necessity. 
If the cause be free and intelligent, the process will be 
thought of as the working out of his design. Just as 
surely in the one case as in the other, the operation of the 
cause is manifested at every stage of the process. It is 
only a Deism which thinks of God as having made the 
world and left it thereafter to itself, which can feel that 
He is further removed from it and us, if conceived of as 
creating not by instantaneous fiat, but by gradual develop- 


a Probably for the first time in an explicit form, in A. M. Fairbairn’ s 
Studies in the Philosophy of Religion and History, p. 92. 


28 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


ment. To those who recognise His working in every 
change, He is always near ;? and in reference to Him who 
knows the end from the seganattie a plan carried forward 
through untold ages, only reveals more wonderfully the 
patience with which He works, as well as the infinite 
magnitude of His purposes and aims. 

4-6. It has been justly observed? that the more or 
less declared hostility to Religion of many representatives 
of Physical Science and what is called modern thought, 
is largely the result of a reaction, of that swing of the 
pendulum of opinion from one extreme to the other, of 
which the experience of every day furnishes us with fresh 
instances. No doubt in earlier ages a system of philo- 
sophy was regarded as authoritative which imposed its 
forms of thought upon Nature rather than sought Nature’s 
truths in Nature herself. From Aristotle’s general prin- 
ciples, by means of Aristotle’s logic, conclusions were 
derived which were regarded as representing the truth of 
fact without being subjected to the test of experiment. 
On the rise of what 1s known as the Baconian philosophy, 
which rested upon observation and experiment conducted in 
accordance with a gradually improved method of scientific 
induction, the errors of medizval physics brought discredit 
upon the entire structure of medieval thought. A method 
which had proved itself so incompetent in one sphere 
became suspected in every sphere in which it had been, 
or could be applied. Then Theology not only represented 
the most important interest which could engage the atten- 

1 Romanes (Lhoughts on Religion, pp. 118, 121) points out that 
“there is nothing either in the. science or philosophy of mankind 
inimical to the theory of natural causation being the energising of a 
will objective to us,” and emphasises what is important and too often 
forgotten in connection with this subject, that in proportion as that 
objective will is self-consistent, its operations must appear to us non- 
volitional, or mechanical. It is no argument, therefore, ‘against the 


divine origin of a thing, event, etc., to prove it due to natural causation.” 
Of. Fisher, Grounds of Theistic and Christian Belief, p. 447 seq. 


SCIENCE AND RELIGION 29 


tion of a finite yet immortal being, but it dominated the 
whole intellectual arena, and admittedly included in its 
claims to spiritual authority many subjects which men 
have since come to see were not really or rightly included 
in it. The Church had, on the break up of the Western 
Empire, been the great medium of handing down the 
torch.of light and learning to later generations. It is not 
to be wondered at if men’s thoughts of nature, man, and 
God had become entwined into a system of which every 
part was held as equally authoritative, and in regard to 
which the questioning of one part should seem to threaten 
the stability of the whole. As from time to time men 
have come to distinguish between the sphere in which the 
Church or Scripture could be held as rightly deciding, 
and that in which the decision belonged to other authorities 
and could only be reached by independent modes of in- 
vestigation, can we marvel that to many the world should 
appear to be turned upside down? It was not merely that 
the Church’s authority was so far discredited, but that, 
as in an earthquake, the solid ground seemed rocking 
beneath their feet. The struggle against such ideas, if 
to some extent the effort to retain power on the part of 
those possessed of it, was even more the instinctive shrink- 
ing of men’s minds from losing grasp of all certainty what- 
ever. Those who have been resuscitated after apparent 
drowning tell us that the agonising thing is not the drown- 
ing but the coming to life again. Even so the first strokes 
by which the intellectual torpor of mankind was broken 
through, and consciousness imparted of some of their 
hitherto unnoticed surroundings, were no doubt a painful 
experience. The forced opening of the eyes did not seem 
a friendly act; rather did man seem to be deprived of all 
that was to him dear, valuable, and helpful. It had been 
taken for granted that whatever Churchor Bible touched on, 
* the allusion was invested with the same title to deference, 


30 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


as confessedly was due to their teachings on the highest 
and holiest themes. The resistance which followed was 
no doubt unwise and carried too far, but it deserves not 
more our condemnation as the desperate struggle of blind 
and infatuated ignorance, than our sympathy as the 
struggle in self-defence of men who set the highest 
interests in the highest place, who trembled when these 
seemed to be imperilled, who thought they knew what they 
were losing, but could not tell whither they were being 
led. 

As regards the emancipation of their special pursuits 
from the control which the representatives of Theology 
had naturally though mistakenly sought to retain, victory 
has been with the physical philosophers. Modern Science 
no less than ancient wisdom is justified of her children. 
But it has been the fashion with many of her votaries to 
exaggerate the difficulties which early scientific develop- 
ment had to encounter, while they fail to distinguish 
between the representatives of Religion and the Religion 
they sincerely, however mistakenly, represented,—they 
fail to distinguish between the treasure these sought to 
guard and the minor matters they believed to be bound 
up with it. As has been already indicated, it is to a 
reaction against the restraints to which they believe, and 
so far justly believe, that scientific investigation was 
formerly subjected, that the bitterness of many of those 
who attack religion from this side is due. Because Science 
within her own province has proved her truth, they claim 
that all who ever opposed her—even though it may be 
shown that in doing so these opponents were really going 
beyond their own proper province—were false and the 
supporters of falsehood, that they even had no proper 
province to defend. While recognising and understanding, 
so far as we may, extreme standpoints such as this, we may 
well be on our guard against the falsehood of extremes, 


SCIENCE AND RELIGION 31 


and suspect the reliability, at least to their full extent, of 
movements which in their nature are reactions from real 
or supposed antagonisins. 

7. It may not be pleasant or reassuring for us to read 
the story of alarm, outcry, persecution, which has attended 
many of the notable advances of Physical Science. If we 
condemn the intolerance which persecuted Galileo, and 
stamped with ecclesiastical censure the Copernican system 
of astronomy, we remember how the same spirit animated 
the long struggle with geology and resisted its conclu- 
sions as to the antiquity of the earth, how still more 
recently the luminous suggestions of Darwin and. his 
biological followers have been combated, not on the question 
of scientific accuracy, but because of their apparent Theo- 
logical implications. The opposition to such views is 
perfectly intelligible without imputation of more than the 
inevitable amount of ignorance, groundless terror, narrow- 
ness and intolerance. But we must certainly not draw 
the lesson from the history of the controversy that the 
walls of the theological Jericho are to tremble whenever 
the men of Science choose to blow the trumpet. Because 
much has been yielded in the past, it does not follow that 
everything is to be given up in the future. Scientific 
facts must be acknowledged whenever they are established, 
the supremacy of Science in her own domain must be 
frankly acknowledged, but scientific theories must be ex- 
amined and scrutinised before they are admitted. We 
may fairly claim that scientific men should be generally 
agreed among themselves before they can expect those 
who have not their special training to accept their — 
authority ; we may admit a probability that a certain 
view is correct while yet many gaps remain to be filled 
up before it can be claimed as established, while, on the 
other hand, some broad conclusion seems to us to be based 
on somewhat narrow premises. The lesson which ought 


32 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


to be learned by the theologian and apologist from such 
experiences is that on that border-ground where religion 
and science approach each other, it is as necessary that 
the theologian should not attempt to claim more than what 
the principles and methods proper to Theology assure to 
him, as that the man of Science should in like manner 
restrict himself to his own sphere. 

8. It is important therefore to notice what exactly 
Physical Science is. It is systematised and ascertained 
knowledge, but it is strictly confined to knowledge which 
comes to us through the senses. It is not meant, by thus 
pointing out the source of the knowledge, to call in ques- 
tion its accuracy as far as it goes. When we speak of 
‘“‘sense-knowledge” it is often to call attention to the 
fallibility of that knowledge, for the senses are deceptive, 
and need to be supplemented and corrected by each other, 
and by reason. But for scientific purposes the senses are 
carefully trained, and they are aided by ingenious and 
delicate apparatus, so that they give invariably the same 
results,—in some sciences the “personal equation,” the 
amount of tendency to error peculiar to the individual 
observer, being accurately measured and taken into account. 
When we emphasise the fact that Physical Science is 
systematised sense-knowledge, it is not any degree of 
untrustworthiness, it is limitation of range, limitation of 
the applicability of its method, which is in view. Is there 
no knowledge save what comes to us through the senses 
and is resolvable into the terms of sense-perception? It 
is a very inadequate philosophy of human experience which 
says there is not. The human mind is not a tabula rasa ,; 
it has a constitution of its own, a power of transmuting 
into thought the material presented to it in perception ; 
it reacts upon what it perceives, and contributes elements 
of its own to the general result. And the methods and 
criteria which are in place in Physical Science are not 


SCIENCE AND RELIGION 33 


universally applicable. It is not Religion only to which 
they are inapplicable. The statement that they do not 
apply to spiritual matters rouses opposition at once, and 
is set down to prejudice. But what of metaphysics, of 
philosophy? Does Science itself not run up constantly 
into regions where it is lost to view, where it rests upon 
hypothesis and theory, upon principles which it is as 
incapable of proving as of disproving?! That intermediate 
world which the senses perceive and with which they deal 
is seen to rest upon realities as incomprehensible to Science 
as the inferences which the Theist draws from its acknow- 
ledged facts, and to which he claims that these facts in- 
dubitably point. Out of Metaphysics Science springs, into 
Theology it passes, but both of these regions are beyond 
its power of observation or of verification. ‘“‘ No scientific 
test, however delicate, can discover the presence of God 
as it discovers a current of magnetic or electric force.”? 
The senses individually are limited. The eye cannot 
perceive a sound, nor the ear a colour.? Why should it be 
denied that there is that of which none of them singly, nor 
all of them in combination, can discover the faintest trace. 
The speculations of physical philosophers themselves show 
that the phenomena of sense cannot be regarded as self- 
subsistent and self-explanatory. A bare Positivism affords 
no rest for the mind. ‘‘ Heard melodies are sweet, but 
those unheard are sweeter,” and so the important things 
in existence are not those which sense immediately per- 
ceives, but those which reason discerns in and by them. 

9. But it is equally necessary to determine the proper 


1 “ Although science is essentially engaged in explaining, her work 
is necessarily confined to the sphere of natural causation ; beyond that 
sphere (7.e. the sensuous) she can explain nothing. In other words, 
even if she were able to explain the natural causation of everything, 
she would be unable to assign the ultimate raison d@étre of anything.” 
—Romanes, Thoughts on Religion, pp. 125, 126. See Note XII. 
Limitations of Science. 

2 Mair, Studies in the Christian Evidences, p. 18,  ° Ibid. p. 18. 


3 


34 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


sphere and function of Religion in reference to that border- 
land where the questions specially in view at this moment 
emerge. Here we note that it is the accident, not the 
essential, of Religion which is found within the domain of 
Science—its clothing, its envelope, its medium. Coming 
as Religion does into human life as a living force, it cannot 
but touch all the elements of that life. But it does not 
change their nature; it only seeks as far as possible to 
invest them with a religious meaning, to try them by the 
light which it casts upon them. The sunlight passes into 
the hovel; its nature is not changed, its purity is not 
tainted by what it falls on there, foul and repulsive as 
many of the objects it reveals may be. It may cause an 
instantaneous cleansing, but it does not directly effect it. 
Rather does it bring the truth of each object into clear 
perception. So Religion does not substitute true for un- 
true thoughts as to physical being, but it seeks to bring 
whatever thoughts there are into the service of the ideally 
good, the morally beautiful. In so doing, it may purify 
and elevate the thoughts themselves ; there are thoughts 
which cannot coexist with the heavenly light, which fall 
away in its presence as mean and unworthy.! Among the 
points of controversy to which the early chapters of 
Genesis have given rise, one thing is clear. Comparing 
them with the cycle of traditions, Chaldean or Phe- 


1 Romanes (Thoughts on Religion, p. 157) calls attention to what 
he regards as “‘ one of the strongest pieces of objective evidence in favour 
of Christianity.” It is “the absence from the biography of Christ of 
any doctrines which the subsequent growth of human knowledge— 
whether in natural science, ethics, political economy, or elsewhere— 
has had to discount.” He considers this negative argument as ‘ almost 
as strong as the positive one from what Christ did teach.” He contrasts 
Jesus Christ in this respect with other thinkers of antiquity. ‘‘ Read 
the dialogues (of Plato), and see how enormous is the contrast with the 
gospels in respect of errors of all kinds—reaching even to absurdity in 
respect of reason, and to sayings shocking to the moral sense. Yet 
this is confessedly the highest level of human reason on the lines of 
spirituality, when unaided by alleged revelation,” 


SCIENCE AND RELIGION 35 


nician, to which they are claimed as belonging, we cannot 
fail to be struck by the nobler form and tone of the 
Hebrew narratives, by the absence of grotesque and un- 
worthy elements, and this, it is obvious, is due to the 
religious spirit by which they are pervaded.! Whether 
reconcilable with the deliverances of Science or not, the first 
chapter of Genesis is at least worthy to be the Hymn of 
Creation. But the knowledge Religion brings is not that 
which can be had elsewhere and in other ways; it does 
not set itself to correct the latter as such ; it has criteria 
of its own, its own evidence, its own range of experience, 
but if it claims for God the things which are God’s, it 
concedes to all lower, earthly powers the things which 
legitimately belong to them. 

10. It is to be noted, further, as a fertile source of 
error in connection with this subject, that the tendency to 
ascribe to men who are eminent authorities in their own 
sphere an equal eminence and authority in other spheres 
is mistaken, even, it may be said, unjustifiable. A great 
statesman or soldier whose dicta in matters concerning his 
own profession would be received with merited confidence, 
propounds his views upon religion whether favourable or 
adverse, and immense importance is at once in many 
quarters attached to the declaration. A trained theologian 
saying the same things would be disregarded as a partisan. 
Yet in so far as Religion rests upon evidence, the judgment 
of those who have had to deal mainly with one class of facts 
is not more but less trustworthy when it is applied to facts 
of an altogether different nature. It is said with regard to 
the English courts of Equity and Common Law that a 
lawyer, whose training and practice have lain in one of 
these courts, becomes thereby less suitable to be raised to 
the bench of the other. If it be so with different branches 
of law, what must it be when the sphere is changed from 


1 Cf, Fisher, Grounds of Theistic and Christian Belief, p. 478. 


36 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


that of legal to that of philosophical, historical, scientific, or 
theological considerations? ‘The well-deserved eminence 
which men have attained in the field of physical science 
does not make their testimony in the least degree more 
worthy of weight than that of other men in the depart- 
ment of historical and critical evidence ; and this for the 
obvious reason that they are entirely out of their special 
field. In the new field their special eminence counts for 
little or nothing; their testimony is simply that of an 
outsider, and not for a moment to be compared with that 
of even a very ordinary specialist in this department.” ! 
This is of course assuming that in the one department 
the man in question is a trained expert, while in the other 
he is more or less of an amateur. One who has seriously 
studied both departments may attain in each the authority 
due to the exceptional ability which he brings to both. 
This, however, can scarcely be said to be the case with 
the majority of those who enter the arena of antitheistic 
controversy. | 

11. Is it, however, a coincidence only that Physical 
Science has attained its highest development and made its 
greatest advances upon Christian soil, and in the hands, if 
not always of Christian men, at least of the men of Christian 
countries? It is, as has been remarked, ‘in the atmosphere 
of Christianity, amid the influences which Christian 
civilisation has originated, in the bosom of Christian 
society, that the amazing progress of natural and physical 
science in all its departments has taken place.”? And if 


the authority of great names is invoked, it must be ad- . 


mitted that many of the foremost men of Science have 


been scarcely less remarkable for their Christian faith and. 


life. The names of Brewster, Faraday, Forbes, Graham, 
Rowan Hamilton, Herschel, Joule, Balfour-Stewart, and 


1 Mair, Studies in the Christian Evidences, p. 14. 
* Fisher, Grounds of Theistic and Christian Belief, p. 461, 


oe 


SCIENCE AND RELIGION 37 


others have been mentioned as instances of recent or con- 
temporary men of Science of the highest eminence, who 
have at the same time not been ashamed of the Gospel of 
Christ.! 

12. It is accordingly to be hoped and believed that 
what has been called the conflict between Religion and 
Science is a passing phase of thought, partly due, as we have 
seen, to reaction, partly, no doubt, to pure misunderstand- 
ing. As the representatives of each department understand 
better the nature and limits of their own, as well as of 
each other’s, investigations there should be a disappear- 
ance of distrust on the one side and prejudice on the 
other. Religion as an ineradicable fact of human nature 
cannot be incompatible with anything which Science is 
capable of teaching as to the world we live in. The 
difficulty is one not of fact but of interpretation. We 
have no reason to be afraid of Science so long as we trace 
God’s hand in the marvels she makes known. The real 
danger is lest by filling up too much the sphere of our 
vision she shut God out from us, while our minds seek 
satisfaction in her infinite variety, and our energies be- 
come absorbed in merely secular aims and objects. 


Law is God, say some ; no God at all, says the fool ; 
For all we have power to see is a straight staff bent in a pool ; 


And the ear of man cannot hear, and the eye of man cannot see ; 
But if we could see and hear, this Vision—were it not He? 


1 Romanes (Thoughts on Religion, p. 137) argues from the diverse 
attitude to Religion of men distinguished in mathematical and physical 
science that “‘reason counts for very little in the complex of mental 
processes which here determine judgment,”’ but he remarks that in his 
own time at Cambridge there was a galaxy of mathematical genius 
emanating from that place such as had never before been equalled. 
* And the curious thing in our present connection is that all the most 
illustrious names were ranged on the side of orthodoxy. Sir W. 
Thomson, Sir George Stokes, Professors ‘Tait, Adams, Clerk-Maxwell, 
and Cayley—not to mention a number of lesser lights, such as Routh, 
Todhunter, Ferrers, etc.—were all avowed Christians.” 


CHAPTER HT 
REVELATION 


1. THE result of a full examination of the evidence 
for the existence of God, and of a thorough-going 
criticism of the rival theories of the Universe, is 
that the Divine and human spirits are seen to be 
related to each other in virtue of a kindred nature, 
and of a common relation to the material or pheno- 
menal world which affords to both an object of 
knowledge and a sphere for the exercise of will. 

2. It has also been seen that Religion is 
essentially a communion between the Spirit of God 
and the spirit of man. 

3. The question arises, Is the only knowledge 
of God that at which man has arrived, reasoning 
by his own unaided powers from the facts of 
external nature, the human mind, and history? Is 
Nature the only revelation of God? or may we not 
recognise a more direct influence of the mind of 
God upon that of man, in the form of a com- 
munication made, a guidance vouchsafed by the 
former to the latter ? 

4. Men who were formerly known as Deists, 
but who now call themselves Theists in a restricted 


REVELATION 39 


and, so to speak, sectarian sense, acknowledge the 
infinity and goodness of God, but deny that He has 
revealed Himself except through nature and con- 
science. This doctrine finds itself involved in 
difficulties when confronted with the problem of 
physical and moral evil. 

5. Christianity meets these difficulties (@) in 
regard to physical evil, by laying stress upon moral 
rather than material ends, by setting the education 
and discipline of the spirit above mere happiness ; 
and (b) with regard to moral evil, by emphasising 
the facts that moral beings could not exist apart 
from the possibility of moral evil, that a moral is 
higher than a non-moral existence, and that when 
moral evil actually appeared it was met by the 
power of God in redemption. 

6. With the recognition of the existence of God 
and of the need of man in consequence of both 
ignorance and sin, the probability of a Revelation 
being given becomes very great. We find it im- 
possible to believe that a Supreme Being who is 
good would leave man without needed guidance, 
and that One who is wise and powerful could not 
discover a method of affording such guidance. 

7. The’ possibility of Revelation is illustrated 
(a) by the nature and value of knowledge acquired 
from other persons, as distinguished from that gained 
by our own individual experience ; (0) by the train- 
ing which a teacher is able to give to his pupil; 
and (c) by the relation of experiment to observation 
in scientific Inquiry. 

8. As communicated knowledge reveals at once 


40 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


the ends toward which we should strive and the 
means of attaining them, enabling us to act in 
intelligent harmony with these ends, so Revelation 
aids and directs the development of the religious 
and moral nature in man. 

9. The claims of any professed Revelation to be 
regarded as really such must be subjected to the 
following tests: (a) What amount of direct historical 
evidence can be produced in its favour—evidence 
that certain persons claimed to have received a 
Divine Revelation, and that they were not deluded 
or deceivers in so doing? (0) What amount of in- 
direct historical evidence can be produced—evidence 
excluding every other known or probable explanation 
of what is alleged to have been revealed? (¢c) How 
far is the alleged Revelation borne out by internal 
evidence, by its own worthiness in substance and 
form, and its capability of being verified in our 
spiritual experience ? 

10. The claim of the Christian Scriptures to 
contain a Revelation from God must be tried by the 
application of these tests. Especially important is 
the character of Christianity as a whole, and the 
consideration that it is here or nowhere that such a 
Revelation has been given. 


1. It is of course a mere outline of the Theistic argu- 
ment or of a criticism of the Antitheistic positions which 
has been given in the preceding chapters. It is necessary 
also to remind the reader that neither in the one case nor 
the other is it claimed that the course of reasoning which 
has been or can be presented is absolutely conclusive. All 
we aim at is to arrive at the view which best accords with 


. REVELATION 4] 


all the known circumstances of the case, and which presents 
the fewest difficulties. 

2, 3. When we are thus satisfied that the mind we 
discern in Nature is not simply a reflection of our own 
intelligence, but that mind answers to mind, that the 
spiritual within us is justified in its recognition of a 
spiritual without us, the further point remains to be con- 
sidered, Is Nature the only Revelation of God? Is it only 
through the slow process of our gradual understanding of 
the natural world that we can know anything about Him ? 
Much depends upon this. For it is not unreasonable 
to suppose that the difficulties which beset our reading 
of Nature might be obviated by further knowledge, if 
only there were another source from which it might be 
derived. And if God cannot make Himself known save 
through Nature, how can He help us on many an 
occasion of our sorest need when Nature is “blind and 
deaf to our beseeching” ; and what in that case becomes 
of the value to us, not to speak of the reality of the 
religious life ? 

4,5. Deists! maintain that to regard a Revelation as 
necessary is to imply that the Creator’s work is imperfect 
and needs to be supplemented or rectified, and further that 
the giving of such a Revelation would involve a violation 
of that law of continuity and uniformity which lies at the 
root of all natural Science and is its indispensable condi- 
tion. But to maintain this position they must assume 
that the system of things as we see it 2s perfect ; for if it 
is not perfect, on what ground can the idea of a complet- 
ing and rectifying scheme be pronounced impossible ? 
They profess to believe in a God of infinite wisdom and 
love, but are quite unable to reconcile this belief with the 
indisputable existence of ‘physical and moral evil. John 
Stuart Mill in a well-known passage of one of his Theistic 


1 See Note XIII. Deism. 


42 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


Essays! arraigned Nature on a charge of pitiless cruelty. 
We may fully admit that his contention is one-sided, leav- 
ing out of account innumerable instances of benevolent 
adaptation ; but still it must be acknowledged that if 
natural laws be all, and natural ends the only ends to be 
achieved, it is difficult to avoid the horns of Mill’s dilemma 
by which we are called upon to reject either the power or 
the goodness of God: And what is true of physical evil 
is still more apparent when we turn to consider moral evil. 
Perfect as the system of the world may have been when it 
left the hand of its Creator, who can doubt in the face of 
daily experience that it has somehow gone wrong? 
Christianity recognises this. It holds that, while a moral 
being is one capable of self-determination, and while the 
power of choice cannot be without the possibility of choos- 
ing wrongly, it was yet not inconsistent with the goodness 
of a good and all-wise Creator to create moral beings, 
since a free and loyal service must be of greater value than 
that of a mere machine. But if any doubt yet remained 
as to the permission of evil being consistent with the 
goodness of God, it would be removed by the consideration 
that the bane was not without its antidote, that from 
the. beginning there was a power of God able to enter 
the lists with the dark hosts of evil and to come forth 
victorious. 

6-8. In the acquisition of ordinary knowledge we owe 
much to others ; indeed we may be said to derive by far 
the larger part of our actual knowledge from this source 
and not from our individual experience. We have not 
each to begin at the beginning, we can build our edifice 
of knowledge upon foundations which have been provided 
for us. We are saved the long series of trials and failures 
through which the human race has passed. <A similar 
service is rendered by every teacher to his pupil. The 


1 Three Essays on Religion, p. 28, ete. 


REVELATION 43 


pupil profits by the teacher’s experience, and is led directly 
to his goal. There is much which no teacher can do for 
his pupil, an amount of labour, of receptivity, which the 
pupil must supply for himself, but he may at the same 
time be saved endless and often fruitless toil by following 
the instructor’s guidance. This is the difference, to take 
another illustration, between mere observation of natural 
processes, and intelligently directed experiment. The 
same ground may be traversed, but with what added 
rapidity and directness in the latter case! Now Revela- 
tion has been described as “God manifesting himself in 
the history of the world in a supernatural manner and for 
a special purpose.” ! The nations might ‘feel after God” 
for ever without finding Him, or if they found Him, it 
would only be by long and painful effort. But as they 
become capable of receiving Him, He is found of them, 
the veil falls away, they know Him and emerge into the 
hight of His truth. Revelation is a slow and gradual 
process because the nations have had to be educated to 
receive what God has to reveal; but how much slower 
must the process have been had the knowledge been only 
attainable through man’s unaided efforts.2, What a wise 
teacher therefore does for his disciples; what skilful 
experiment does for the scientific investigator ; what the 
accumulated knowledge of the race does for each of us 
—directing, supplementing, and making more effectual our 
own efforts ; this, if Revelation be a fact, God does in the 
highest region of knowledge. 

9. The considerations which have so far been advanced 
have designedly been made independent of any theory of 
the mode, or any question of the accompaniments, of 
Revelation. Of the Miraculous as confirming the fact of 
Revelation we shall speak in the next chapter. It is 


1 Prof. Bruce, Chief End of Revelation, p. 57. 
2 See Note XIV. Revelation as Education. 


44 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


enough for our present purpose if a man perceives a truth 
and feels persuaded that it has reached him from above. 
And when men have grasped thoughts new in the history 
of the world, when these thoughts have proved a light 
and power for all time, when they have been to those who 
received them, and to those who came after, the fountain 
of a new and higher life, is it an unreasonable theory that 
such men were taught of God, that influences more im- 
mediate than the mere suggestions of ordinary experience 
have been brought to bear upon them and have instilled 
this knowledge into them? This has from time to time 
been their own explanation ; can we in view of all the 
facts pronounce it an unfounded one? It is important to 
note the tests that may and should be applied when such 
claims have been advanced. If we are satisfied that 
neither delusion nor fraud can be proved or rendered 
probable on the part of those who declare that they have 
received from God that which they deliver to others, we 
can scarcely refuse to accept their testimony, and to believe 
that their knowledge came to them in the way they have 
described. But further, we may appeal to the indirect 
historical argument. If, surveying the history of the 
world, we observe here and there ideas and conceptions 
of which the preceding history affords no adequate ex- 
planation; if we see slow and laborious progress in a 
certain direction followed by a sudden and unaccountable 
attainment of the end in view, our conclusion must be 
that this is due to some source above and beyond ourselves 
through whose activity we are being led as with paternal 
wisdom into the sanctuary of Truth. Our other line of 
confirmatory evidence for the reality of Revelation is 
found in the character of that which is revealed. We 
instinctively accept that which we perceive to be true, 
good, divine, as our spirits are stirred we know not how 
by the beautiful in nature and art. , Our affections and 


REVELATION 45 


will spontaneously go forth to that which we recognise 
as worthy and noble. So far Revelation must be its own 
witness. It must shine by the light that is in it, by 
its own spiritual beauty, by its divine quality and its 
adaptation to the nature and needs of the soul. 

10. It is only as they fulfil the requirements thus de- 
scribed that the Christian Scriptures can make good their 
claim to be the record of a Revelation given from heaven 
tomen. We cannot here pause to enter into the questions 
now so earnestly debated as to the date and authorship of 
the books of Scripture. We take our stand upon the 
more general ground that in so far as Christianity can 
be shown to be, as a whole, unique, spiritually exalted, 
adequate to the needs of men, and different from anything 
which might have been looked for as the product of 
human thought and experience, it makes the existence of 
a supernatural element in Scripture all but indisputable ; 
while it will be readily and generally admitted that if 
anywhere man has a Revelation from God, it is contained 
in the Bible. 


CHAPTER: “EV. 
MIRACLES 


1. CuristIAN Advocates do not argue in favour of 
the Miraculous for its own sake, but as evidence of 
the real and reliable character of the revelation, 
and of the Divine source of the power, manifested 
in Christianity. 

2. At the present day the belief in Miracles is 
assailed upon three great lines of argument. 

(1) The first objection is that they are in 
themselves impossible, being excluded by the con- 
ception of uniform natural law. In answer to this 
objection it is submitted— 

(a) That the Miraculous presupposes an order 
of Nature to which it is related, and without which 
it could convey no special meaning to the mind of 
the observer. 

(b) That in the existence of a personal God we 
have a cause whose operation Science can neither 
determine nor exclude. 

(c) That material order should always be re- 
garded as subordinate to moral ends. 

(2) The second objection is that if Miracles 
were possible no evidence would be sufficient to 


MIRACLES 47 


prove that they had taken place, and that as a 
matter of fact, no satisfactory evidence has ever 
been adduced for any alleged miracles. In answer 
to this we may urge— 

(2) That from the nature of the case the 
evidence for Miracles must be historical and not 
experimental; that it is a question of testimony, 
and must be examined as such. 

(0) That the argument that Miracles are con- 
trary to “a firm and unalterable experience” 
unfairly excludes from experience the testimony 
which is under investigation. How can any ex- 
perience be described as “firm and unalterable” 
when there is direct testimony to facts inconsistent 
with it ? 

(c) That the Christian Miracles have in their 
favour adequate historical testimony. 

(3) The third objection is that an examination 
of the manner in which miraculous narratives arise, 
—combined with a conviction of the inflexibility of 
natural order,—has resulted in the growth of a 
sentiment which rejects all such narratives even 
prior to inquiry. In answer to this it may be 
remarked— 

(az) That the sentiment referred to is confessedly 
a sentiment or predisposition, not a demonstration ; 
and consequently, whatever its foundation, it cannot 
be accepted as final, but may be modified by cir- 
cumstances being brought into view, which in the 
formation of the sentiment had been left out of 
account. 

(b). That when 7s origin is in turn examined, it | 


48 | HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


is found to lie in the occupation of men’s minds 
with material objects, and their absorption in secular 
interests. | 

3. With the rejection of Miracles, faith in the 
moral and spiritual character of the world-order 
and of its Author may not be altogether destroyed, 
but its rational foundation is seriously shaken. 

4. Christian advocates do not profess to defend 
every alleged miracle, or even to defend each of the 
Biblical Miracles on separate and independent 
erounds. The latter may, however, be maintained 
as forming parts of a system the miraculous nature 
of which, in part or in whole, may be proved. 

5. Crucial examples of the miraculous are the 
person and character as well as the resurrection of 
Christ. 


1. It should be clearly understood that, when Christian 
advocates insist upon the recognition of a supernatural 
or miraculous element in connection with the origin 
and development of their religion, it is not from any 
unworthy superstition or for the satisfaction of a riotous 
imagination. They do not desire, any more than others, 
to represent the world as filled with irregularities and 
exceptions. Yet they have been constantly treated by 
their opponents as if this had been their attitude and 
aim—as if they thought that to establish certain facts 
as miraculous would be to make them more interesting 
and impressive. In reality, they have no wish to under- 
value the achievements of Science, to deny that Reign 
of Law which modern Science has done so much to 
establish and illustrate; on the contrary, as we shall 
see, they recognise in this also a revelation of God. 
Were it not that they have reason to think that events 


MIRACLES 49 


have occurred which cannot be accounted for by the 
ordinary action of natural laws, and that by these events 
a confirmation has been given to Christian truth and 
Christian belief which nothing else could have given, 
there would be no object in including the Miraculous 
among the Evidences of Christianity. But just as man 
leaves unquestionable traces of his presence upon the 
objects around him, so that they are appreciably different 
from what they would have been had his intelligence 
and will not been exercised upon them; as mind com- 
municates with mind by impressing itself through its 
volitions upon the system of nature; so it is held that 
the Miraculous is a language by which the Infinite Being 
may speak more directly to the heart of man. If there 
be no evidence for it, of course we can but conclude that 
all that man knows of God is what he can gather for him- 
self from the face of Nature ; no presumption in its favour 
will cause it to be received in default of evidence. On 
the other hand, any presumption against such evidence on 
the ground of present observation of the course of Nature 
is fairly met by a consideration of the religious interests 
involved.!. For example, one of the springs and principles 
of Religion is man’s need of help when oppressed by 
the burdens and difficulties of life. But if there is no 
ehannel of communication between the Divine and human 
spirits other than the long chain of natural sequences, 
if there is no nearness of the one to the other but such 
as the contingencies of life—themselves the source of 
the difficulties of which man is so painfully sensible— 
express and allow, Religion seems an illusion and God 
might as well not exist at all. It has been truly said 
that a real answer to prayer, that is, any other answer 
than the reflex influence of the prayer itself, is impossible 
upon any theory which makes miracles impossible. 
1 See Note XV. Miracles and Christianity. 
4 


50 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


It is all very well to say that Nature is the expression 
of an Intelligence and Will, of a Personality behind and 
above Nature; the question is, Do this Intelligence and 
Will express themselves in any other way than through 
Nature, as man, for instance, expresses himself by modi- 
fications of natural processes which can in no other way 
be produced? If not, God.is Nature, and Nature is God, 
with all that that implies. But man’s conception of 
reality, of life, and of free activity, is derived from what 
he knows within and of himself. It is a God in lke 
manner real, living, and freely active, that can alone 
satisfy his desires and needs. Man feels himself to 
belong to another world than the world of sense; is he 
wrong ‘therefore in anticipating that some glimpses of 
that other world will be possible to him, that somehow 
and at some time the veil of the sensible will be rent, 
and the light of that which is beyond it shine through ? 
And when we think of the overwhelming interest of 
Immortality,—that if man is not merely a Nature- 
existence, if this life is not his all, its prolongation after 
death .must be under conditions of which the laws of 
Nature and the experience of the world can tell him 
nothing, an existence of which if it be real it is most 
important for him to be assured,—the probability that 
he will not be left in ignorance becomes very great. 
Apart from Revelation immortality is a mere vague hope 
—a hope against hope, a hope against all probability if 
the Naturalistic account of the world be the true one 
—a hope which the more earnest and candid of the 
recent representatives of the theory sadly try to persuade 
themselves and others that they can perfectly well do 
without.! 

2. (1) It is in one sense true that the mere possibility 
or conceivability of Miracles is not disputed by any school 


1 See Note XVI. ‘ Having no Hope.’ 


MIRACLES 59 | 


of thinkers. What is meant by the objection that 
Miracles are impossible is that the evidence for the 
uniformity of natural law is so great, so wide-reaching 
and irrefutable, that it is quite unnecessary to examine 
the evidence in favour of an alleged miracle which would, 
it is urged, introduce an element of uncertainty into a 
realm of uninterrupted order. But what is the true 
relation of these two ideas—Miracle and Natural Law 
—to each other? It is clear that Miracles presuppose a 
law of Nature to which they are relative and on which as 
a background they appear. If they were everyday occur- 
rences they would cease to be miracles ; and in that case 
not only would the everyday life and progress of mankind 
be interfered with, but special interpositions would cease 
to be full of Divine meaning. Again, given the existence 
of God, and even the sceptical philosopher admits that 
there would be an adequate cause for any unusual event. 
For if the world-order be arranged and upheld by a 
Personal Being, it cannot be denied that He has power 
to manifest Himself as such by adapting this order to 
some special purpose, and it is quite conceivable that 
circumstances may arise which will induce Him to exert 
that power. The only question is whether circumstances 
have ever arisen to justify such direct manifestations of 
Deity. But is not the moral higher than the material, 
are not moral interests to be preferred to natural uni- 
formities? If there be a God whose great aim is the 


1 “ Modern agnosticism is performing this great service to Christian 
faith ; it is silencing all rational scepticism of the a priori kind. And 
this it is bound to do more and more the purer it becomes. In every 
generation it must henceforth become more and more recognised by 
logical thinking, that all antecedent objections to Christianity founded 
on reason alone are ipso facto nugatory. Now, all the strongest objec- 
tions to Christianity have ever been those of the antecedent kind... . 
So far as reason is concerned, pure agnosticism must allow that it is 
only the event which can ultimately prove whether Christianity is vs ue 
or false.””—Romanes, Thoughts on Religion, pp. 166, 167. 


52 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


education of moral and spiritual beings, miracles are not 
inconceivable.! With this end we may believe that God 
founded the material order, and for the same high end 
He may mould and modify it. Such a conception does 
not reduce the universe, as has often been asserted, again 
to chaos, or attribute caprice to the Deity; it merely 
asserts, what all wise philosophy and true religion will 
be found to assert, that the material is subservient to the 
moral and spiritual, that the object of living is to live 
well, and to grow in righteousness and holiness, and in 
nearness to the perfection of God. 

(2) No evidence, it is said, can establish a miracle. 
If, by the evidence referred to, be meant such evidence 
as we have for a law of Nature which can at any time 
be put to experiment and verified, it is quite true that 
such evidence is not forthcoming. But it is in the very 
nature of the case that it should not be. A miracle is 
not a scientific fact, nor do we frame our conception of 
God as of a Being “constantly interfering with the course 
of Nature”; but if there be a God, a due appreciation of 
higher than material ends will render it not improbable 
to us that He may sometimes appear as taking a special 
part in the affairs of His own universe. What is really 
required is credible historical testimony. ‘ But,” said 
Hume, in his celebrated argument on this subject, ‘a 
miracle is a violation of the laws of Nature ; and as a firm 
and unalterable experience has established these laws, 
the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the 
fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can 
possibly be imagined. No testimony is sufficient to 
establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a 

1 “The antecedent improbability against a miracle being wrought 
by a man without a moral object is apt to be confused with that of its 
being done by God with an adequate moral object. The former is im- 


measurably great ; the latter is only equal to that of the theory of 
Theism, i.e. nid.” —Romanes, Thoughts on heligion, p. 180. 


MIRACLES 53 


kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than 
the fact which it endeavours to establish.” It is clear, 
however, that such expressions as ‘‘ violation of the laws 
of Nature” and ‘firm and unalterable experience” assume 
the very point which is under discussion. Laws of 
Nature are not violated by the introduction of a personal 
volition by which they are called into operation and 
adapted to a certain end; and experience ceases to be 
firm and unalterable in proportion as testimony 1s avail- 
able that events inconsistent with its general tenor have 
taken place. The question of the evidence for the reality 
of the Christian miracles opens a large subject, and 
involves the history of New Testament times and the 
credibility of the writings which record it. We can only 
remark here that it is inconceivable that so vivid an 
impression of the person and character of Christ could 
have been conveyed by any who were not sufficiently near 
Him to be trustworthy witnesses of His miracles. And 
further, even though the Gospels could be shown to be 
collections of traditional narratives current in the Church 
a century or a century and a half after Christ, the 
objection does not apply to the Epistles of St. Paul. Of 
these Epistles, four—those to the Galatians and Romans 
and the two to the Corinthians—have practically been 
accepted by the most destructive of modern critics. The 
latest of these Epistles was written within a quarter of 
a century of the death of Christ; and from these the 
resurrection of the Lord and other miraculous facts can 
be established as clearly as any fact can be established 
by testimony. The whole life of St. Paul also, the 
whole existence of the Christian Church, are evidences 
for the reality of miracle, greater than which can scarcely 
be desired. 

(3) The third objection is perhaps at the present day 
the most difficult to deal with. It combines, in a sense, 


54 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


both the others. It rests upon the conception of natural 
law as contributing to the growth of a sentiment which 
tends to discredit all miraculous narratives, and creates a 
reluctance even to examine the evidence led in their 
favour; and in dealing with the evidence, it claims to 
explain its rise and growth, giving what has been termed 
the natural history of miracles. This position has been 
represented not only by one of the ablest of modern 
historical works,! but by one of the most popular of 
modern works of fiction.2 Its widespread influence must 
be acknowledged. The difficulty in meeting it arises 
from the fact that there is so little common ground upon 
which an argument may be based. Still it may be 
asked—Is this not after all but a tidal wave of thought 
which is passing over the minds of men? This fixed 
idea of a continued and uninterrupted development, may 
it not be itself a point in the progress, and destined to give 
place to some higher thought, some more comprehensive 
idea? But this idea has itself an origin, and is susceptible 
of explanation. Mr. Lecky himself says—‘‘ The decline 
of the influence and realisation of dogmatic theology 
which characterises a secular age brings with it an in- 
stinctive repugnance to the miraculous, by diverting the 
mind from the class of subjects with which the miraculous 
is connected.”? The admission is rife with important 
consequences, for by it we see that what is called ‘the 
spirit of the age” derives its character not from any 
profound reasoning, not from any natural necessity, not 
from any special regard for the interests of truth, but 
from the class of objects with which the mind of the 
age is chiefly occupied. In other words, the exclusive 
pursuit of secular aims—natural science, commerce, 


! Lecky’s History of Rationalism. 2 Robert Elsmere. 
* History of Rationalism (crown 8vo edition), vol. i. p. 182. See 
Note XVII. Rationalism and Miracles. 


MIRACLES 55 


luxury—any form of earthly ambition or absorption, 
makes the mind incapable of receiving, understanding, 
or even entertaining the idea of any Being higher than 
man, or any state of existence higher than the present. 
We refuse to be bound by a sentiment so derived, because 
we believe that those objects and interests from exclusive 
attention to which it springs are not the only objects and 
interests which the universe contains. 

3. Modern free-thinking, we are reminded, ‘“ revolves 
around the ideal of Christianity, and represents its spirit 
without its dogmatic system and its supernatural narra- 
tives. From both of these it unhesitatingly recoils, while 
receiving all its strength and nourishment from Christian 
ethics.” + How long, we may ask, will it do so? History, 
whether of the world before or after Christ, does not 
encourage the belief that morality can long hold its 
own, when the sanctities of religion have been generally 
abandoned. Utilitarianism demands from men a greater 
stretch of unselfishness than Christianity ever dreamed 
of. Christ says, Lose the lower life and you shall find 
the higher. Utilitarianism says, Be content to lose both 
lower and higher. If Christianity has not won men in 
general to such self-sacrifice as it asks, will Utilitarianism 
be more successful? Atheists may preserve an enthusiasm 
for the “service of Man” in a society permeated and 
moulded by Christian ideals, but when these fade 
through the weakening of the forces which have sus- 
tained them, who can assure us that they will be any- 
where reproduced ? 2 

4. In treating of the miracles of the Bible, it is plain 
that many are of such a nature that they cannot be 
substantiated separately and independently, but only as 
members of a series, as parts of a system of which the 


! History of Rationalism (crown 8vo edition), vol. i. p. 170. 
2 See Note XVIII. Parasitic Morality. 


56 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


more important and prominent features are capable of 
such verification as historical inquiry can afford. If they 
evidently fall into line in the development of Revelation, 
and are not of a nature inconsistent with its general 
character and purpose, they receive the support which 
the system derives from its main elements. Here the 
usual criterion is In a way reversed; the strength of the 
chain is not that of its weakest, but of its strongest link ; 
since the evidence available for the outstanding miracles 
creates a predisposition in favour of all those standing 
in organic connection with them. Scepticism, of course, 
argues upon the contrary supposition. It takes the most 
apparently aimless, least edifying, and most slenderly 
evidenced miracle it can discover in the Bible, and by 
the strength of the case which it can state against 
this, it would have us estimate the strength of its case 
as a whole. The device is legitimate from a purely 
strategical standpoint, but will not mislead any who 
come to the question in a spirit of fair and open in- 
vestigation. The Christian advocate is entitled to take 
up his strongest position and say—Here are the grounds 
on which my faith rests, here is the evidence on which 
I maintain the historical basis and the reality of my 
religion. 

(5) In the personality and character of Christ, and in 
His resurrection we have instances of alleged miracle. 
The evidence in favour of their miraculous character is 
indeed so strong that the whole question of miracle may 
be rested on the possibility of proving it in these cases. 
They will form the pubjecs of consideration in the next 
two chapters. 


i i i 


Wh 


CHARTER ov 
PERSONALITY AND CHARACTER OF CHRIST 


1. THE supreme excellence of Christ’s character is 
acknowledged by opponents of Christianity. 

2. The historical character of the main out- 
lines of the hfe of Christ and of His relation to the 
religion bearing His name is unquestioned, as also 
that the portraiture contained in the Gospels corre- 
sponds generally with the belief of the earliest 
Christians regarding Him. This portraiture is 
specially noteworthy— 

(a) For its vivid life-like character. 

(b) For its harmony and consistency. 

(c) For its combination and reconciliation of 
opposite qualities or those seldom found united 
elsewhere. 

(¢@) For its universal character, that is, the 
absence of national, class, and individual peculiar- 
ities. 

3. This portraiture must be either an invention, 


‘or an idealised picture, or be drawn from actual 


knowledge of the person represented. But it was 
beyond the ability of the authors of the Gospels 
to conceive such a character; neither can it be - 


58 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 
regarded as the product of forces at work in that 
age, which all tended to produce ideals of a totally 
different nature. The character of the Jesus of the 
Gospels is a strikingly original one. | 

4. If the claims which Christ puts forward in 
His own name are not justified, they evince a 
fanatical self-delusion of which there is no other 
evidence in the accounts which we have of Him, or 
they are fatal to His moral reputation. 


1. Jesus Christ, it has been truly said, is Himself the 
miracle of Christianity. Our religion takes its origin 
from Him, and His personality and character are indelibly 
stamped upon it. That personality and character are 
unique. It is useless for the opponents of Christianity 
to criticise this or that miraculous narrative until they 
have first given a reasonable explanation of Hzs being of 
whose glory they are but scattered rays, a being in whose 
presence the supernatural seems to become natural, the 
expression of His own exalted nature. It would not be of 
much avail for any Christian apologist to extol the beauty 
or depict the holiness of the character which the life of 
Christ, as narrated in the Gospels, reveals to us. It is 
better for our purpose to take the admissions of those who 
do not hold the same views as ourselves upon the matter 
now in hand. Dean Stanley, in one of his Essays 
(Christian Instrtutions, ch. xiv.), quotes, from a sermon! 
preached before a Scottish Synod, a series of admirably 
selected passages to show, as he says, “that the testimonies 
to the greatness of this historical revelation are not con- 
fined to the ordinary writers on the subject, but are even 
more powerfully expressed by those who are above the 


' The Witness of Scepticism to Christ. By the Rev. P. M‘Adam — 


Muir, D.D., now Minister of Morningside, Edinburgh, and author of 
The Church of Scotland ; a Sketch of its History in the present series, 


ee ee ee 


PERSONALITY AND CHARACTER OF CHRIST 59 


slightest suspicion of any theological bias.” Of these 
passages two may be given here. The author of Super- 
natural Religion says—‘‘The teaching of Jesus carried 
morality to the sublimest point attained or even attainable 
by humanity. The influence of His spiritual religion has 
been rendered doubly great by the unparalleled purity and 
elevation of His own character. Surpassing in His sublime 
simplicity and earnestness the moral grandeur of Chakya- 
Mouni, and putting to the blush the sometimes sullied 
though generally admirable teaching of Socrates and Plato, 
and the whole round of Greek philosophers, He presented 
the rare spectacle of a life, so far as we can estimate it, 
uniformly noble and consistent with His own _ lofty 
principles, so that ‘the imitation of Christ’ has become 
almost the final word in the preaching of His religion, 
and must continue to be one of the most powerful 
elements of its permanence.” The other is a quotation 
from John Stuart Mill: “It is the God incarnate, more 
than the God of the Jews or of Nature, who, being 
idealised, has taken so great and salutary a hold on the 
modern mind. And whatever else may be taken away 
from us by rational criticism, Christ is still left,—a 
unique figure, not more unlike all His precursors than all 
His followers, even those who had the direct benefit of 
His teaching.”! That any one bearing the human name 
should be described in such terms as these by his disciples 
and followers might not be remarkable—even though we 
could be sure that they had not been betrayed by their 
partiality into the language of eulogy—but that such em- 
phatic testimony should be given to the impression which 
he made upon them by those who would be the last to 
draw the natural inference from their own admissions is a 

fact to be pondered over. And it is to be noted that these 


1 See Note XIX. Testimonies to the Character and Teaching of 
Christ. : 


60 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


judgments were formed notwithstanding all that adverse 
criticism of the Gospels had been able to advance. Less 
critical perhaps, but not less significant, are the words of 
Rousseau—“‘ If the life and death of Socrates are those 
of a sage, the life and death of Jesus are those of a God” ; 
or those of Napoleon, when, in conversation with his suite 
at St. Helena, he had compared Christ with the heroes of 
the ancient and modern world including himself—“ TI think 
I understand somewhat of human nature, and I tell you 
all these were men, and [am a man; but not one is like 
Him ; Jesus Christ was more than man.” 

2. That the main outlines of the life of Christ are 
strictly historic there can be, and indeed is, no question. 
Besides the testimony of the Gospels and of the undoubted 
Epistles of St. Paul we have that of Jewish and Heathen 
writers. In the very beginning of the second century 
Pliny, the Roman governor of Bithynia, testifies that in 
his province the Christians included many persons of all 
ages, of all degrees, and of both sexes, and that they met 
together “to sing hymns to Christ as to a god.” This 
reference illustrates both the personal relation of the 
religion to Christ and the estimate in which his followers 
held -him, confirming that which is given in their own 
documents and traditions both of earlier and later date. 
The Epistles of St. Paul already mentioned bring the 
general outline of the facts related concerning Jesus Christ, 
and the claims made on His behalf, within a period of 
some twenty to thirty years after the death of Christ. 
And the nature of the evidence is such as to make it 
indubitable not only that such a person existed, and that 


a ee ee ese 


ey 


He was the founder of Christianity, but that the Gospels, — 


which may not have been composed until some years later, 
represent-in all important particulars what His followers 
believed from the beginning regarding Him. We have 


therefore a real person, and we have a portraiture of Him ; 


PERSONALITY AND CHARACTER OF CHRIST 61 


how far does this portraiture correspond with facts, how 
far is it to be relied upon? If this is a question which it 
is now impossible to answer by direct evidence, how, on 
the assumption that it is not historical, is its conception 
and construction to be accounted for? It is a fair argu- 
ment that behind all criticism of the documents, behind 
all criticism of the history, there is the character of Jesus 
itself, the picture of the God-man who went about doing 
good, to be explained. If not the representation of an 
original, how did it arise? And if the representation of 
an original, how did He come to be? If in Christ we 
have a wonder of human nature, one of those advances 
upon all that has been elsewhere known or dreamt of—an 
advance such as nature and history, according to their 
modern interpreters, are incapable of making by themselves ; 
we have that which may remove all reasonable doubt con- 
cerning the validity of the Christian revelation, and may 
assure us that in it a living Father in heaven speaks to 
the hearts of His human children, that in Christ a new life 
is manifested and a new hope given. Of this great por- 
traiture of the Gospels there are several features which have 
attracted special attention. Of these we may notice— 

(a) Its vivid life-like character. We feel that if not 
the very work of eye-witnesses, the Gospels must embody 
the accounts of those who were such. Their power largely 
consists in the way in which they bring us into the 
presence of Jesus, so that He moves before us,—imparting 
to the narrative a self-evidencing quality of its own. It 
was this that impressed even Goethe. “I esteem the 
Gospels,” he says, ‘“‘to be thoroughly genuine; for there 
shines forth from them the reflected splendour of a 
sublimity proceeding from the person of Jesus Christ, and 
of so divine a kind as only the divine could ever have 
manifested upon earth.” 

(6) Not merely the Holiness of Jesus in itself, but - 


62 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


the wonderful harmony and consistency of his character — 


throughout. In ordinary human life there is a mingling 


of the high and low, the pure and the unworthy; and — 
in the products of human imagination, even when the 3 
evident intention has been to represent that which is — 


lofty and noble, there has been an unavoidable taint 


perceptible, an apparent weakness and unworthiness. But — 


as He moves across the sacred page, His actions not 
commented on but pictured and allowed to speak for 


themselves, there is in the case of Jesus only a uniform — 


consistency of goodness, a goodness of the never-hasting, 
never-resting kind, untouched by any consciousness of sin. 


(c) Another point is the union of opposite qualities in — 


Christ’s character, meekness and dignity, resolution and 
kindness, righteousness and pity, calmness and indigna- 
tion—all that is most firm and authoritative in man, with 
all that is tender and patient in woman ; these have from 
the beginning evoked the wonder and commanded the 
admiration of men. They are component parts of a 
picture which surely none would have power to draw 
except from the life. 

(7) And further in the same direction is the wnver- 
sality of his character. With its true humanity, with all 
its vividness of presentation, there is nothing narrow or 
limited about it. In point of nationality we fail to find 
in Jesus any of the distinguishing marks of the Jew of 
His time—He has neither the prejudices nor the exclusive- 
ness of His nation. There is nothing even peculiarly 
oriental in His thoughts and teachings. He is not the 
representative of a class; we forget in His presence 
distinctions of rank; we see Him attracting to Himself 
men of every condition. He was free from all individual 
narrowness of spirit and of outlook ; the qualities which 
so distinctively marked the best of those who surrounded 
Him are lost in the harmony and breadth of His nature. 


PERSONALITY AND CHARACTER OF CHRIST 63 


3. How then is this character to be accounted for? 
It has been justly said that three explanations only are 
possible ; either it was a pure invention, or an idealised 
picture, or it was drawn from actual knowledge of the 
original. As to the first two suppositions it is almost 
enough to refer to the judgment of Mr. John Stuart Mill 
—It is of no use to say that Christ is not historical, 
and that we know not how much of what is admirable 
has been superadded by the tradition of His followers. 
The tradition of His followers may have inserted all the 
miracles He is reputed to have wrought. But who among 
his disciples or among their proselytes was capable of 
inventing the sayings ascribed to Jesus, or of imagining 
the life and character revealed in the Gospels? Certainly 
not the fishermen of Galilee; as certainly not St. Paul, 
whose character and idiosyncrasies were of a totally different 
sort ; still less the early Christian writers, in whom nothing 
is more evident than that the good that was in them was 
all derived, as they always professed that it was derived, 
from the higher source.” | The favourite hypothesis of the 
present day is to represent the Christian Church itself as 
the myth-maker, the portrait of the Christ as the expression 
of the Christian feeling, which in turn is to be regarded as 
the product of the forces at work in the age in which 
Christianity arose. But nothing is more remarkable than 
the originality of the character of Christ when compared 
with all the known forces of that age. Dr. Matheson in 
an able Essay (Contemporary Review, Nov. 1878), after 
noting the marvellous unity of the portrait presented in 
the Gospels, asks whence this ideal was derived. He 
shows the impossibility of its being a product of Judaism. 
The universal character of Christ’s spirit and nattire is (as 
we have already seen) inconsistent with such a supposition. 
Could it be “from this intellectually narrow soil that 


1 See Note XX. Is the Gospel Portrait an Invention ? 


64 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES ; 


there emanated the most many-sided conception which has 


e 


ever proceeded from any age in history?” He examines — 


one by one the four ideals of the Gentile world. These 
are physical strength, intellectual power, esthetic culture, 
and regal majesty, represented respectively by the Asiatic, 
the Greek philosopher, the Greek artist, and the Roman ruler, 


RA 


But neither singly nor in combination do they explain the — 


Christian conception which is the essence of the Gospel — 


narrative. This differs from, as it transcends, them all. 


4. Are there no contrary voices as we listen to the 
general tribute of admiration paid alike by adherents and — 


opponents of Christianity to the beauty and elevation of 


“A {> 
a 


the Christian ideal? There have been among its opponents — 
those who saw that to deny the superhuman character of 
Jesus, and to admit the virtual spotlessness of His moral — 


character, placed them in a somewhat awkward and diffi- 


cult position. Mr. Francis Newman, in his Phases of — 
Faith, took up the challenge and impugned the moral — 
character of Jesus on the ground of His having put forth — 
claims which could only be excused on the supposition — 
that they were justified. The charge was that He “ claimed 4 
to exercise superhuman authority, and both demanded and — 
received such honours and obedience and devotion as are — 


due only to the Divine Being.” We may fully admit © 
that if these claims were baseless, Mr. Newman’s conclusion — 


falls short of the truth “that in consistency of goodness 


Jesus fell far below vast numbers of His unhonoured ~ 
disciples.” The point raised is one of supreme importance. _ 


On the face of the record lies the remarkable, the startling 


ase 


manner in which Jesus speaks of Himself, His mission, | 


His significance for the world. Even though we confine 
our attention to the Synoptic Gospels, leaving the Fourth 


poe 


Gospel out of account,—even though we go no further — 
than the Sermon on the Mount itself,—we have claims _ 


put forward which we cannot reconcile with the conscious- 


ees 


=e 
‘ 
. 


PERSONALITY AND CHARACTER OF CHRIST 65 


ness of a weak, if not an erring, humanity. He taught 
as one having authority. He said, not—‘‘Thus saith the 
Lord,” but—‘“I say unto you.” There is no need to 
multiply instances. No one superficially acquainted with 
the Gospel narratives can question that He advanced claims 
which, if there was nothing exceptional in His nature and 
His relation to God, can only be explained as the aberra- 
tions of self-delusion, or the misrepresentations of conscious 
deception. Both views have been maintained. Renan 
almost in the same breath extols the unequalled greatness 
of Jesus and declares that He availed Himself for His own 
purposes of the illusions of humanity—an “immoral 
eulogy,” as it has been scathingly termed, ‘of alleged 
immorality.” But none who have felt the ‘sweet reason- 
ableness” of Jesus, who have observed the way in which 
He repressed false expectations in His disciples, and how 
He anticipated the end of His toils and sufferings, can 
imagine Him deceived, and still less, the deceiver of others. 
His words—taken as a revelation of His own consciousness, 
taken in connection with His blameless character which all 
the scrutiny of all the ages has not been able to charge 
with sin, taken in connection with what, as history reveals, 
He has been to man and to the world—-present a problem 
which has only one possible solution. On Naturalistic 
principles would not Christ Himself be the most unaccount- 
able phenomenon that even the Bible records ? 


‘“The very God! think, Abib ; dost thou think ? 
So the All-Great were the All-Loving too— 
So through the thunder comes a human voice 
Saying ‘O heart I made, a heart beats here ! 
Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself! 
Thou hast no power, nor may’st conceive of mine ; 
But love I gave thee, with myself to love, 
And thou must love me who have died for thee !”? 


l Robert Browning. 


5 


GHAPTER-WVi 
. THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST 


1. Tur question to be considered is, Can the faith 
of the primitive Church in the resurrection of 
Christ be explained on any more credible supposi- 
tion than that the event really took place in some 
such way as is recorded in the Scriptures ? 

2. Looking first at the evidence for the historical 
reality of the Resurrection the following points 
are to be noted :— 

(1) Among Scripture testimonies that of St. Paul 
is of special importance, as the first Epistle to the 
Corinthians is admitted by all to be authentic, and 
to have been written before any of the Gospels, at 
least in their present form. 

(2) Besides the Scripture records, the existence 
of the Church, and especially the early institution 
of the Lord’s Day, and of Easter day, are proofs of 
the nature and strength of primitive belief as to the — 
Resurrection. . 

(3) Objection has been taken to alleged dis- 
crepancies and contradictions in the Gospel accounts, 
but these have not been found more difficult to deal 
with than might have been anticipated at such a 


THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST 67 


distance of time, with knowledge regarding many 
points necessarily imperfect. 

3. The theories which have been advanced to ex- 
plain the belief of the disciples of our Lord in His 
Resurrection, without admitting its reality, are— 

(1) The allegation of the Jews that the disciples 
stole away the body. Besides the improbability of 
the story, it involves a systematic deception on the 
part of the early Christians which is inconsistent 
with-the whole tenor of their life. 

(2) The assumption that Jesus did not really 
die upon the cross. This is involved in improba- 
bility on physical grounds; it would include Jesus 
Himself in the system of deception on which the 
disciples entered, and it cannot account for the 
joyous hope by which the first Christians were 
animated. 

(3) The Mythical theory—that of the gradual 
growth of the story in the imagination of the 
Christians—requires for its confirmation a longer 
time than is known to have passed before the 
Resurrection was proclaimed. 
} (4) The Vision theory, as represented by Renan, 
is inconsistent with the calmness and sobriety of 
judgment exhibited by the Apostles, and with the 
rarity, the regularity, and the early cessation of 
the appearances of Jesus. Besides, the conditions 
of expectancy, prepossession, and fixed idea, which 
are acknowledged as essential to the development 
of visions, are in this case wanting. Muiote 
(5) Keim’s theory of objective visions has no 
advantage over the traditional view. 


68 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


1. In presence of undeniable facts of which a certain 
explanation has been traditionally given, the historian is 
bound to admit the explanation so generally received, or 
to offer another and more credible one. There is a pre- 
sumption in favour of the traditional account, especially 
if it can be said to be contemporary, or almost contem- 
porary, with the event itself, which forestalls the plea 
that the fact is simply inexplicable. The denial of the 
miraculous, which with writers of the negative school 
is an axiom, not to be proved but taken for granted, is, 
one cannot help thinking, as alien from the openness of 
mind and impartiality of judgment which ought to mark 
the scientific observer in nature or history as any of the 
mental attitudes which are so freely criticised when ex- 
hibited on the other side. The true student of history 
must be prepared to accept the facts which historical 
investigation brings to light, and in framing his ex- 
planation of them must not start with any preconceived 
idea of what they must be. There is a very extensive 
literature dealing with the question of the Resurrection 
of Christ. From all sides, negative and positive, and 
in all its aspects, it has been argued; the amount of 
discussion being indeed a fair measure of the recognised 
importance of the point at issue. We can here only 
summarise typical views and the more prominent features 
of the controversy. The difficulty itself cannot be better 
stated than in the words of Ferdinand Christian Baur, 
one of the most famous New Testament critics of the 
century. ‘Nothing but the miracle of the Resurrection,” 
he says (Church History, Eng. Trans., vol. i. p. 42), 
“could disperse the doubts which threatened to drive 
away the faith of the disciples after its object into the 
eternal night of death. The question as to the nature 
and the reality of the resurrection lies outside the sphere 
of historical inquiry. History must be content with the 


Diet — 


THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST 69 


simple fact that in the faith of the disciples the resurrec- 
tion of Jesus came to be regarded as a solid and un- 
questionable fact. It was in this faith that Christianity 
acquired a firm basis for its historical development. 
What history requires as the necessary antecedent of all 
that is to follow, is not so much the fact of the resurrec- 
tion of Jesus, as the belief that it was a fact.”! Very 
strange seems to us the plea that it is outside the sphere 
of historical inquiry to determine the reality or otherwise 
of an alleged historical event. Nothing can more clearly 
show Baur’s consciousness of being unable to account on 
his own principles for what he yet found himself con- 
strained to recognise as fact. Very different is the view 
which Keim takes of the duty of the historian. ‘“ How 
is this to be explained,” he says (Jesus of Nazara, vol. 
vi. p. 323), ‘“‘this vision, this living again, of one that 
was dead? . . . It may be that history cannot find such 
an explanation; but this should not prevent her from 
seeking it, instead of at once renouncing the task.” And 
after offering his own explanation, he fairly demands, 
“Yet those who ridicule present us with a_ better 
explanation.” 

2. (1) St. Paul’s testimony is of special importance, 
because the first Epistle to the Corinthians, in which it 
“appears, was written prior to any of the Gospel narratives 
and to the Acts of the Apostles, and its authenticity . 
is admitted by the most negative school of criticism. 
The mode, however, in which St. Paul alludes to the 
evidence, which he had obviously collected with much 
care, shows that, when he wrote, the belief was no new 
one, and makes perfectly credible the account of the later 
documents that it was within a few days after the death 
of Jesus that the new life began to manifest itself in the 
Christian community, and that it was through faith in 


1 See Note XXI. Baur and Harnack on the Resurrection. 


70 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


the resurrection of Jesus that the disciples addressed 
themselves to the conversion of the world. Nor was it 
any isolated contact which they claimed to have had with 
the Risen One, but an intercourse of an intimate character 
extending over several weeks until He ascended from them 
into heaven. 

(2) Besides the Christian Church as a whole,—which 
may be said to have been born on the day on which 
Christ rose from the dead, as the nation of the Israelites 
was said to have been born on the night of the Exodus,— 
there are two institutions which bear a noteworthy 
witness to the prevalence and power of the belief in 
the Resurrection. One of these is the change from the 
seventh to the first day of the week as the day of rest 
and worship, an observance which can be traced back 
to Apostolic times, and which was certainly due to the 
belief that on the first day of the week Christ had risen, 


and had on that day generally appeared to His disciples 4 


in the period between the Resurrection and the Ascension. 
The other witness is Easter, the yearly festival by which 


the Resurrection was specially commemorated, and which, — 


as a day of the greatest triumph and rejoicing, can also be 
traced back to very early times. 
(3) Many apologists have expressed themselves as 


unable to reconcile all the apparent discrepancies con- — 


tained in the Gospel accounts of the Resurrection. 
Great difficulties undoubtedly exist, though many of 
those enumerated by Keim, for instance, can only be 
regarded as such if we suppose that each of the accounts 
was intended to be exhaustive. We need not indeed 
be surprised if it is now impossible to explain every 
particular consistently with the absolute accuracy of the 


fok 
7 
ne 


narrators.! These testify to, and so far naturally reflect 


the excitement of the time; and in all probability no 


1 See Note XXII. Discrepancies in the Narrative of the Resurrection. 


a 


THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST (sh 


attempt was made to collect the experiences of the 
various witnesses until some time had elapsed. Apparent 
discrepancy in minor points may fairly be taken as proof 
that the narratives have either come down to us at first 
hand, or were immediately derived from those to whom 
the incidents occurred. They have not been edited, or 
forced into artificial agreement. If, notwithstanding, a 
fairly intelligible account can be woven out of them, with- 
out straining either language or probability, we may claim 
that the objection on the score of apparent contradictions 
is largely discounted. A very learned, ingenious, and on 
the whole successful attempt to do this is that of Principal 
_ J. B. M‘Lellan in his New Testament, vol. i. It is not 
claimed that such Harmonies, as they are called, show 
how the incidents actually occurred, but that they meet 
objections by showing how they may have occurred on 
the supposition that our Gospels are to be trusted. 

3. It remains to glance at the different sceptical 
theories of the Resurrection which have been suggested. 

(1) The Jews accounted for the empty grave by saying 
that the disciples had come while the soldiers slept and 
stolen the body away. Even if this was possible, the 
whole life and work of the apostles is against it. If one 
_ thing is apparent from the accredited traditions, it 1s that, 
in their belief in Christ Risen, the disciples were absolutely 
sincere. | 
(2) The theory of Apparent Death is an aggravated form 
of that just referred to. It makes Jesus art and part in 
the deception which was practised upon the world ; and if 
‘inconsistent with what we know of the character of the 
— disciples, was much more inconsistent with the character 
of their Master. Apart from this, however, Jesus was 
officially certified as dead before He was removed from the 
cross. And the disciples were quite capable of dis- 
tinguishing between resuscitation and resurrection. ; 


12 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


(3) The Mythical theory is the favourite resort of a 
considerable number of negative critics. Some have said 
that in the Gospel narratives of the Resurrection we see a 
myth in the process of formation. Myths, however, like 
geological strata, require tume for their formation. What- 
ever might be the case with certain details, regarded on 
this theory as mythical embellishments, there was no time 
for growth so far as the belief in the Resurrection itself 
was concerned. Besides, the Resurrection doctrine of the 
Apostles was quite different from any which had previously 
been held. It was evidently formed in accordance with 
their own experience. Christ Risen was to them at once 
the pledge of a future life and an interpretation of its 
nature. 

(4) The Vision theory is that which has been most 
widely held by those who reject the supernatural explana- 
tion. It was adopted by Strauss in his second or popular 
Life of Christ. Its most developed and famous form is 
that in which it appears in the works of Renan, the French 
sceptic. Though cast down and sad, the disciples, 
according to Renan, were not destitute of all hope. 
They could not believe that their Master was dead. 
They were in the state of mind when the veriest trifle 
might turn them this way or that. The impulse was 
given when Mary Magdalene visited the grave of Jesus. 
She had the “glory of accomplishing the resurrection.” 
The open grave struck her with astonishment, she fancied 
she saw the Master standing near. It was the beginning 
of similar imaginations. One after another of the Christian 
community took to seeing visions of the risen Jesus which 
they mistook for realities. The delusion spread and 
became more definite; the Church was based upon it, and 
all her activities inspired and moulded by it. ‘“‘ Surely,” 
as it has been justly remarked, “this theory, if true, 
involves a miracle as great as the Resurrection itself.” 


THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST 73 


No one has more carefully and powerfully criticised the 
Visionary hypothesis than Keim, at least in the form of 
visions due merely to the fancy or imagination of the 
disciples. He points out that too much is often made of 
the credulous character of the apostolic times, and the 
tendency to visionary experiences. ‘Side by side with 
this,” he says, ‘ there is still more of calm consideration and 
sober reflection to be seen in the action of all the Apostles.” 
He also lays stress upon the orderly and regular character, 
and especially the early cessation, of the visions of Christ, 
by which they were distinguished from analogous examples 
to which he refers. Still further he points out that the 
visions not only came to an end, but even made way for a 
totally opposite mental current. The Apostles passed at 
once from the visions to the clear recognition of the 
mission entrusted to them and to the definite and heroic 
resolution to devote themselves to it ; in other words, their 
transition to vigorous activity was the direct consequence 
of their attaining the knowledge of the victory and glory 
of Jesus. To these observations it may be added, that on 
ascertained psychological principles, before even the most 
credulous will see visions and mistake them for realities, 
one or other of these mental conditions is absolutely 
necessary, namely, prepossession, fixed idea, and expect- 
ancy. Now it is certain that the prepossessions and fixed 
ideas of the disciples had been in favour of an earthly 
Messiahship and Kingdom. And after the crucifixion 
they were expecting anything rather than resurrection. 
They could not and would not believe the tidings which 
were brought to them. Only Christ’s own frequent and 
palpable appearance convinced them of the fact. 

(5) Keim, holding that History must leave the ground 
of the belief in the Resurrection an insoluble riddle, thinks 
that Faith may find rest in an explanation which he 
suggests as his own. He believes in visions, but in. 


74 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


divinely sent, and so far true, objective, visions. The 
difficulty which he seeks to overcome in this way is the 
idea of a bodily resurrection. Evidence of the continued 
existence of the Crucified was needed, though all that 
was needed. But for this, he says, “the greatest of men 
would have passed away and left no trace; for a time 
Galilee would have preserved some truth and _ fiction 
about Him; but His cause would have begotten no 
religious exaltation and no Paul.” ... “The evidence 
that Jesus was alive was necessary after an earthly down- 
fall which was unexampled and which in the childhood 
of the human race would be conclusive ; the evidence that 
he was alive was therefore given by his own impulsion and 
by the will of God. The Christianity of to-day owes to 
this evidence, first, its Lord, and next, its own existence.” 
Thus is negative criticism driven by force of circumstances 
into a position divided by an extremely narrow, though all- 
important difference, from the traditional.faith of the 
Church. It may confidently be asked whether, in the 
face of all the difficulties which have been raised on this 
subject, it has any real advantage over the traditional 
belief. 

“For I delivered unto you first of all that which I 
also received, how that Christ died for our sins according 
to the scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he 
rose again the third day according to the scriptures.” 

“Declared to be the Son of God, with power, according 


to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the 
dead.” 


Pee es NG ae a 


CHAPTER VII 


THE LEADING PRINCIPLES OF CHRISTIANITY, 
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL 


1. AS a doctrinal system Christianity sets forth 
thoughts on such subjects as God, man, sin, and 
salvation which are in their main characteristics 
reasonable and worthy, and reconcilable with ad- 
_ vancing knowledge. It is difficult to account for 
the purity and elevation of such conceptions if we 
have regard to the position and circumstances of 
those who were its first adherents and advocates, 
and look upon it as the result of merely human 
agencies. 
_ 2. The moral character and power of a religion 
is rightly made a test of its claim to acceptance. 
3d. The points which we require especially to 
keep in view when we examine the moral side of a 
philosophy or a religion are: 

(1) Whether it shows a full understanding of 
the moral condition to be dealt with,—the extent 
of the moral disease requiring remedy. _ 

(2) Whether it is formed on a right method, 
being based on a clearly apprehended principle and 
constituting an organised whole. 


76 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


(3) Whether the precepts which it supplies are 
the highest possible, and founded on a principle 
capable of indefinite application. 

(4) Whether it is a morality applicable to all — 
mankind and not a rule for a few only. . 

(5) Whether the standard it proposes is the 
highest conceivable, both in regard to individual 
virtues and to their combination and harmony as 
presented in an ideal character. 

(6) Whether it is provided with sanctions or 
motives sufficient to ensure attention to its precepts, 
and to cause it to exercise a living and permanent 
influence upon men. 

4. The parallels adduced from other ancient 
ethical systems for the purpose of discrediting the 
originality of Christian teaching are generally 
detached precepts selected from among many others 
of an opposite character, and can be traced to the 
exceptional excellence of individual natures. 

5. Christianity combines in a unique manner 
Worship and Doctrine with Morality, finding in the 
former the most efficient means for the furtherance 
and support of the latter. 


1. The proof of the Divine origin of Christianity, 
derived from the quality of the guidance it affords to 
human thought and action, yields in importance to no 
other line of evidence. If the ideas it embodies are 
worthy and reasonable, and if it is efficient as a guide of 
life, objections to it are obviously deprived of much of 
their force ; while if its adaptation to its purpose in these 
respects is so remarkable that it can with difficulty be re- 
conciled with the theory of a purely human origin of 
Christianity, we have an argument in favour of our religion 


THE LEADING PRINCIPLES OF CHRISTIANITY 77 


which all can appreciate. Let us look then at some of the 
thoughts which lie at the basis, and are interwoven with 
the substance of Christian teaching. Take the Christian 
view of God, equally removed as it is from Polytheism, 
Dualism, and Pantheism. God is one; His attributes are 
not broken up and scattered among a multitude of finite 
possessors. He is the Author of all things, the Creator as 
- well as the Ruler of the world; His action is not fettered 
by conditions which are independent of Him. And while 
He is in the world, as its life and motive force, He is not 
limited by it. In the Christian conception of the moral 
character of God justice is not sacrificed to love, nor love 
_ deprived of all moral significance by being divorced from 
righteousness,—surely a worthier thought than that of 
mere Power, of a capricious Deity, or even of the stern 
Nemesis, the Vindicator of outraged Law. And when we 
think how the Christian conception of God has proved 
itself capable of assimilating fresh elements, how the dis- 
coveries of sciences such as astronomy and biology have 
only filled it out—made it more imposing and intelligible, 
we must admit that we have here a doctrine with which 
_ philosophy has nothing that can be compared, nothing by 
which it can be superseded. In its view of Man Chris- 
tianity occupies a position equally secure from the charges 
of superficiality and onesidedness. It neither unduly dis- 
parages nor unduly exalts human nature. It gives due 
weight to all the elements of man’s complicated being. 
Its doctrine of Sin traces the evil to its root in a self- 
centred will alien from truth and God, not in the mere 
impotence of the flesh, or the limitations of an earthly 
existence. And its teaching as to Salvation explains 
why, when the systems of philosophy, the great thinkers 
“and teachers of old times, had done their best, and had 
failed to stem the corruption of society, or bring peace 
to the human soul, the doctrine of Jesus came as a glad _ 


78 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


evangel, healing the broken-hearted and setting the 
prisoners free. That God and man should no longer be 
apart—that the Divine should enter into humanity, and 
be identified, as it were, with its experiences and destinies ; 
that the righteous God loved still His wandering and dis- 
obedient child, and was willing to buy back his allegiance 
by the greatest of sacrifices,—this was a conception which 
could not fail, if accepted, to have a redeeming, a lifting 
power, upon the soul to which it came. Apart altogether 
from the truth contained in these representations, as 
thoughts they are purifying, elevating, and stimulating to 
a degree which cannot be ignored even by those who 
would hesitate to accept them and trust to them,! Even 
intellectually regarded, therefore, Christianity occupies no 
mean position. It has been justly argued that a system 
which men of powerful intelligence have spent their lives 
in studying and elaborating, which has, century after 
century, been the subject of investigation and debate, 
must comprise within it a mine of thought. Looking 
then, it is asked, “‘at the human originators of this teaching, 
at the prophets of the old dispensation, at the Apostles, at 
the Teacher of Nazareth, how can this body of conviction 
be accounted for? How did Israelitish seers, some of 
whom were called from the plough, how did fishermen 
who had just left their nets, how did a young villager from 
a carpenter’s shop in Galilee, arrive at these lofty thoughts 
of God and duty, and all the topics which enter into the 


Christian system? ... How happens it that, in intel-— 


_lectual value, the impassioned utterances of Hebrew seers, 


the simple sayings of unlettered Jewish preachers, the 


aphorisms of the youthful Jesus, who was a stranger to 
the lore of even Rabbinical schools, so far outstrip the 
consummate products of philosophical genius?” ? 


1 See Note XXIII. Hlevation and Attractiveness of the Christian System. : 


2 Fisher, Theistic and Christian Belief, p. 366. 


THE LEADING PRINCIPLES OF CHRISTIANITY 79 


2. The value of Christianity as a moral system is, if 
not more conspicuous, at least more generally and readily 
acknowledged as an evidence of its exceptional worth than 
the purity and elevation of its religious ideas. It is not 
unnatural that the ethical character and power of a religion 
should be made a test of its claims to acceptance. Practice 
is the proper test of theory, and while the truth of proposi- 
tions, or the reality of conceptions which have been formed, 
may be doubted, there can be no question of their bearing 
upon moral life. And it is well to remember that the 
need of a Divine Revelation is chiefly moral. Our 
ignorance requires enlightenment, and our liability to 
error, guidance. Sin has made a separation between our 
~ souls and that which is good and holy. Only the Divine 
hand can heal this moral schism; from the abyss of sin 
and depravity only the strong hand of God can effect a 
deliverance. When therefore a religion presents itself 
- claiming to afford the needed light and help, there are two 
_ points as to which it is necessary to satisfy ourselves— 
first, that the moral guidance and power were not other- 
wise accessible ; and second, that this religious system is 
_ thoroughly adequate to the end desired. In other words, 
we have to ask, What the requirements are of a sound and 
satisfactory ethical system ; how far these have been satis- 
- fied in non-Christian systems ; and how far they have been 
fulfilled in Christianity. 

3. It is impossible within our limits to expand and 
illustrate the various statements made under this head, 
and it is noteworthy that the proof of these statements 
must consist largely of illustration. A few remarks, 
by way of indicating their general character, must 
suffice. alow 

(1) That is no adequate doctrine which affects only 
the surface and not the deep-seated springs of moral life, 
as the- physician cannot rightly prescribe for a disease _ 


80 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


of which he has an imperfect knowledge. There have 
been peoples which, at certain stages of civilisation, have 
exhibited an almost child-like unconsciousness of evil, 
such as the Hindus of the Vedic period, or the Greeks 
as depicted in the poems of Homer. At this stage the 
moral faculty is not yet awakened, and moral problems 
are not realised as such. In other cases we have a one- 


sided development, as in the teaching of Socrates, and _ 


especially in that of Stoics who certainly touched the 
high-water mark of ancient pagan morality. Yet the 
Stoics recommended not only that the emotions should 
be controlled by reason, but that they should as far as 


possible be eradicated. Epictetus forbids grief at the — 


loss of friends, and compassion for the unfortunate—the 
misery of others is to be nothing to us. Christian 
morality is indeed the only one which gives due weight 
to the various departments of human nature. It ventures 
to exhibit the true nature of sin, because it alone is 
provided with a remedy. It presents the ideal in its 
purity and fulness because it alone can hold out a prospect 
of its being realised. Nowhere else do we find so wide 
and true a view of the work to be accomplished in the 
regeneration of human nature, and of the conditions under 
which it must be carried out.! 

(2) A true ethical system must be formed in a correct 
and truly scientific manner. Every science is based upon 
some one idea or principle by reference to which its facts 
are classified and interpreted. Thus chemistry is the 


1 “ Aj] this may lead on to an argument from the adaptation of 
Christianity to human higher needs. All men must feel these needs 
more or less in proportion as their higher natures, moral and spiritual, 
are developed. Now Christianity is the only religion which is adapted 
to meet them, and, according to those who are alone able to testify, 
does so most abundantly. All these men, of every sect, nationality, 
etc., agree in their account of their subjective experience ; so as to 
this there can be no question. The only question is as to whether they 
are all deceived.” —Romanes, Thoughts on Religion, p. 152. 


+ a 


THE LEADING PRINCIPLES OF CHRISTIANITY 81 


working out of the idea of Affinity, political economy of 
the idea of Value. Morality in general rests upon the 
idea of Right, but Christianity gives a special meaning 
to the Right—-it is that which is in accordance with the 
law of Love, and, still more definitely, with devotion to 
the person of Christ. Working from this centre all its 
precepts and injunctions are elaborated; by this they 
are tested.1. As a system Christian morality is a unity ; 
it is not disjointed, but progressive, and constitutes an 
organised whole. 

(3) It is not enough, however, that it should lay 
down a general principle; this requires to be applied to 
the various circumstances of human life and phases of 
human action. By the rules formulated for this purpose 
the primary principle of the system may itself in turn be 
tested, since one which does not furnish precepts for 
every case is not sufficiently radical, and one which does 
not furnish the highest rules is not sufficiently pure, to 
be the foundation of a perfect system. We can apply 
this test in two ways. As any ethical scheme is already 
to some extent developed, we can look both to the 
nature of the guidance it has already afforded, and to its 
possibilities, that is, to the guidance it is capable of 
affording in circumstances which had not arisen when 
it was first set forth, and in the earlier stages of its 
growth. 

(4) A perfect ethical system must be a universal one, 
capable of being received and acted upon by all—not 
confined in its influence to a few, while the mass of 
mankind are left to struggle onwards unaided by it. 
Here it was that the noblest philosophies of antiquity 
were especially deficient. The morality of Plato was 
one not for the multitude but for the few select souls. 
But Christianity is a religion for all; its fundamental 

1 See Note XXIV. Pagan and Christian Ethics. 
6 : 


82 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


principle is one capable of influencing every human heart ; 
it demands no special qualifications, it offers no exclusive 
privileges; the rich and the poor, the wise and the 
ignorant, are equally welcome within its pale if they 
submit themselves to its conditions. ‘The savage who 
can do little else can wonder, worship, and enthusiastically 
obey.” (Hece Homo.) 


‘‘Though truths in manhood darkly join, 
Deep seated in our mystic frame, 
We yield all blessing to the name 

Of Him that made them current coin—. 


‘¢ Which he may read that binds the sheaf, 
Or builds the house, or digs the grave, 
And those wild eyes that watch the wave 

In roarings round the coral reef.” 


(5) An ethical system must present a standard—an 
ideal to be imitated, and this must be the loftiest we are 
capable of conceiving. It has been justly pointed out 
that it is in the elevation and purity of this ideal rather 
than in the discovery of new precepts that the progressive 
character of morality is to be seen. If now we compare 
the professed ideal of any ancient system with that which 
Christianity sets before us, we see at once the infinite 
superiority of the latter. The moral philosophy of 
Aristotle culminates in his character of the high-minded 
man. It is enough to say that his high-mindedness 
mostly. springs from pride. The Wise Man of the 
Stoics—perhaps the loftiest character ever conceived by 
unenlightened human thought—was proud and apathetic. 
- “Tt was reserved for Christianity,” says Mr. Lecky,! “to 
present to the world an ideal character which, through 
all the changes of eighteen centuries, has inspired the 
hearts of men with an impassioned love, has shown 


1 History of European Morals, vol, ii. p. 9. 


Nei ese 


THE LEADING PRINCIPLES OF CHRISTIANITY 83 


itself capable of acting on all ages, nations, tempera- 
ments, and conditions, has been not only the highest 
pattern of virtue, but the strongest incentive to its 
practice, and has exercised so deep an influence that it 
may be truly said that the simple record of three short 
years of active life has done more to regenerate and to 
soften mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers, 
and all the exhortations of moralists. This has indeed 
been the well-spring of whatever is best and purest in the 
Christian life.” 

(6) An ethical system ought to be provided with 
motives sufficient to ensure due attention to its precepts, 
and to cause it to exercise a living influence over the 
hearts and souls of men.’ It is in regard to this point 
especially that ancient moral and religious systems show 
themselves defective. The fair maxims of ancient Greek 
morality come to men with no higher motive sustaining 
them than that of expediency or a dread of the Nemesis 
of the gods. Aristotle is utterly unable to say why the 
higher part of man’s nature should assume supremacy 
over the lower. As popular morality declined, the most 
sublime sayings of philosophers fell without authority 
upon the ears of men. They still occasionally commended 
themselves to an individual mind of lofty tone, but to 
others they were mere sayings, admirable indeed but 
without influence. But Christianity founds all its pre- 
cepts upon a personal love to a personal and living 
Saviour; it bases its morality on the revealed condition 
and destiny of man, and speaks with authority on his 
end of life. The philosopher could supply his followers 
with maxims, but he was unable to point to a living God 
and Father, a living Redeemer, an indwelling Spirit, a 
hope sure and certain of a glorious resurrection. The 


1 See Shairp, Studies in Poetry and Philosophy, ‘‘The Moral 
_ Motive Power.” : 


84 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


deficiency of sanction of the ancient systems is incon- 
testably proved by the utter absence in their case of a 
renovating effect upon the life of the people,! while one of 
the earliest and strongest proofs of the power inherent in 
Christianity was the influence it so rapidly attained and 
continued to exercise upon the minds of all. “ Among 
us,” says an ancient Christian Apologist, “you will find 
uneducated persons, and artisans, and old women, who, 
if they are unable to prove in words the benefit of our 
doctrine, yet by their deeds exhibit the benefit arising 
from their persuasion of its truth. They do not rehearse 
speeches, but exhibit good works; when struck, they do 


not strike again; when robbed, they do not go to law; | 


they give to those that ask of them, and love their 
neighbours as themselves.” 

4. An argument has frequently been advanced against 
the claims of Christianity as a moral system, founded upon 
the similarity of many precepts and sayings of ancient 
philosophers and moralists to those of Christ and Chris- 
tian teachers. The fundamental error of this argument 
is the assumption that Christianity is merely, or mainly, 
a body or code of precepts instead of an organised system, 
whose life is in its foundation-principle of Love and Loyalty. 
The precepts quoted, however beautiful and excellent in 
themselves, are usually detached and have no connection 
with any general principle. Take, for example, the exquisite 
maxim attributed to an Indian sage :—‘ Let the honest 


man suffer the blow of the wicked, as the sandal tree — 


that, felled by the woodman’s stroke, perfumes the axe 
that wounds it.” In what does this go beyond—‘“ Love 
your enemies, do good to them which hate you, pray for 
them that despitefully use you”? And did the Hindu 
ever carry out his precept, ever enforce it by an example 
like that of Him who prayed, ‘“ Father, forgive them, for 


1 See Note XXV. Moral Failure of Buddhism. 


a ca 


THE LEADING PRINCIPLES OF CHRISTIANITY 85 


they know not what they do”? Many such parallels 
have been cited from Greek, Chinese, Persian, and Indian 
sources, from the Talmud and other ancient writings ; 
but while we admit the similarity, we perceive that 
their religious force is lost for want of a basis in principle ; 
they remain separate and detached, they “hang in the 
air.” Then, again, it must be remembered that such 
precepts are selected from among many others, the large 
majority of which bear an entirely opposite character. 
The beautiful sayings which, in a celebrated article, the 
late Mr. Deutsch collected from the Talmud, are thus lost 
in a mass of external and frivolous injunctions. And 
even the precepts which we admire so much are often the 
strokes of individual genius, the product of keen ethical 
discernment. Men differ from each other in moral as 
well as in intellectual capacity. The comparatively pure 
and elevated morals of an Epictetus, a Marcus Aurelius, 
a Buddha, evidently sprang in large measure from the 
personal character of their authors; and for those who 
did not share this character, the precepts remained beautiful 
but empty forms. 

D. “One of the first facts,” says Mr. Lecky, “that 
must strike a student who examines the ethical teaching 
of the ancient civilisations 1s how imperfectly that teach- 
ing was represented, and how feebly it was influenced by 
the popular creed.” The importance of a close union 
_ between morality and religion is obvious. In Greece it 
was the development of moral thought which broke down 
the old mythology. It was the moral value and power of 
the thoughts which lay at the basis of Christianity that 
commended them to the consciences and minds of men. 
“Unlike all pagan religions, it made moral teaching a 
main function of its clergy, moral discipline the leading 
object of its services, moral dispositions the necessary 
condition of the due performance of its rites. By the - 


86 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


pulpit, by its ceremonies, by all the agencies of power it 
possessed, it laboured systematically and perseveringly 
for the regeneration of mankind. Under its influence 
doctrines concerning the nature of God, the immortality _ 
of the soul, and the duties of man, which the noblest 
intellects of antiquity could barely grasp, have become 
the truisms of the village school, the proverbs of the — 
cottage and the alley.” ! : 


‘*And so the Word had breath and wrought 
With human hands the creed of creeds 
In loveliness of perfect deeds 
More strong than all poetic thought.” 


1 History of European Morals, vol. ii. pp. 2, 8. See Note XXVI. q 
Lecky on Pagan Ethics. 


CHAPTER VIII 


THE EFFECTS AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF CHRISTIANITY 
IN THE WORLD 


1. THE results attained by the Christian religion— 
the new spirit which it has implanted in the world, 
its, influence in purifying and elevating the social life 
of man—are unique in kind and afford presumptive 
evidence of a higher than human origin. 

2. It is only proper to admit that the modern 
world owes something to pre-Christian elements, 
and something to the influence of race; also that 
the representatives of Christianity have often been 
false to its spirit. 

3. Christianity has proved itself possessed of an ex- 
haustless creative, recuperative, and rectifying power 
when other religions have declined and disappeared. 

4. The new spirit introduced by Christianity 1s 
the spirit of Humanity, of the brotherhood of man, 
in its various applications. 

(1) Christianity has assigned a higher position 
to woman than any other philosophy or religion ; 
it has imparted a new sacredness to marriage, has 
raised the standard of personal purity, and abol- 
ished systematic infanticide. 


88 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


(2) Christianity did not at once forbid slavery, 
but undermined the system by its great principle 
of brotherhood, and gradually led to its abolition. 
Under the influence of Christianity the gladiatorial 
combats and other cruel and licentious sports were 
abandoned. 

(5) Christians from the first manifested a spirit 
of charity even toward those who were not Chris- 
tians, and proved their sincerity by many acts of 
devotion. Hospitals and other institutions of eee 
we owe to Christianity. 

(4) Christianity tends to abolish war, and has 
succeeded in mitigating some of its most painful 
accompaniments. 

(5) Christianity has abolished torture, advanced 
education, encouraged a spirit of chivalry, and given 
new life and range to art and general culture by 
enlisting them in the service of a great ideal. 


1. By comparing Christianity in certain of its aspects 
with the moral teaching of other religions and philosophies, 
we have been able to see how far it goes beyond these 
in purity and power. One thing seems still wanting to 
complete the argument, namely, to show, not only that 
the truths and principles of Christianity commend them- 
selves to our minds and hearts by their elevation, purity, 
and universal applicability, but that this religion has 
achieved such a work in the world, has exerted such an 
influence upon mankind and upon history, as shows it to 
be no beautiful theory, no dream, but a practical power, 
proved to be so by unchallengeable testimony, the witness 
of experience. | 

2. To avoid exaggeration in connection with such an 
inquiry as the present, there are some points which it is 


EFFECTS AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF CHRISTIANITY 89 


necessary to bear in mind. We must not, for example, 
underestimate the elements of life and thought which 
are discoverable beyond the pale and before the rise of 
Christianity. Dark as the picture often is, it is not all 
dark ; many most valuable possessions have been received 
and assimilated by the Christian ages from those which 
went before. Much also is due to the influence of Race. 
If we believe that it is not accidental that Christianity has 
found a home among the peoples which are physically 
and mentally best fitted to lead the van of the world’s 
progress ; if we believe that Christianity accepted has 
done a vast amount to develop the natural gifts and 
capacities of these peoples; we must not forget that 
_ nature here counts for much, that the flourishing tree is 
due to the soil as well as to the seed sown in it. We 
must also bear in mind that influences have been exerted 
in the name of Christianity which did not really contribute 
to human progress and elevation. Christian doctrine 
has suffered from intellectual misapprehension, Christian 
practice from perversion, the Christian spirit from 
contact with tendencies springing from a different source 
and having a different aim from its own. The candlestick 
has not always borne the light, which oftentimes has 
_ glimmered in unexpected quarters; the truth has been 
cherished in lowly hearts while men looked in vain for 
guidance to its official representatives. 

3. Making every allowance, however, we cannot but 
be struck with the fact that the world apart from 
Christianity has always shown, and still continues to 
show, a marked difference from the world enlightened 
by Christian truth and animated by the Christian spirit ; 
that Christianity is the acknowledged religion of the 
highest races of mankind ; that it has proved itself not 
only reconcilable with, but the spring of the highest 
civilisation man has known; that however antagonistic _ 


90 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


modern science, by some. of its representatives, may 
profess itself to Christianity, it is under its shadow that 
science has grown up and obtained a freedom and an 
influence never known before; that not only is the ideal 


of Christianity the loftiest which history reveals, but ‘ 


that the characters which it has formed, the institutions 
to which it has given birth, the actual results achieved 
by it, are unparalleled in the history of the world. If all 
this be no more than a coincidence, it is in the highest 
degree remarkable, but the more closely we look into the 
matter, the more we are convinced that there is more here 
than a mere coincidence, that the roots of our modern life 


are inextricably intertwined with Christianity, and that 


the influence of the latter upon individual and social life 
can be clearly traced in the gradual but inevitable trans- 
formation which has been effected. Besides its power, 
perhaps because of its power, of adapting itself to all 
conditions of human life and all stages of human advance- 
ment, Christianity has ever shown an exhaustless re- 
cuperative energy. When it has seemed dead, it has 
shown that it retained a germ of life; when it has 
wandered under mistaken guidance into wrong paths, it 
has been able to correct the error, and throw off the false 
growth. Other religions have exhibited what has been 


called ‘“‘an arrested development”; the force which in- — 


itiated them has been exhausted ; the personal influence, 
the social movement, to which they owed their origin, 
have in time died away, and the religions have died with 
them. We see the process going on in not a few cases in 
our own day while Christianity flourishes with a life and 
vigour never surpassed at any previous period. 

4. We are not now dealing with any one form of 
Christian philosophy or belief, or with any special Church 
organisation ; but, meaning by Christianity the power of 
Christ’s life and teaching as set forth in the gospels and 


EFFECTS AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF CHRISTIANITY 91 


epistles of the New Testament, we ask what has been the 
moral effect of the introduction of Christianity into the 
world? This may be summed up almost in one word— 
Humanity. Bright as was the light shed by Christ’s life 
and teaching upon the first and greatest commandment, 
that which requires love to God, the work which it did in 
setting next to it the precept, “Thou shalt love thy 
neighbour as thyself,” was hardly less significant. ‘“ It 
_was Christianity,” says Max Miiller,! “which first broke 
down the barriers between Jew and Gentile, between 
Greek and barbarian, between the white and the black. 
Humanity is a word which you look for in vain in Plato 
or Aristotle; the idea of mankind as one family, as the 
children of one God, is an idea of Christian growth; and 
the science of mankind, and of the languages of mankind, 
is a science which, without Christianity, would never have 
sprung into life.” We shall take as illustrations of the 
results of Christianity in this direction a few facts re- 
garding the position of Woman, Slavery, Charity, and 
War. 

(1) It may be said that no portion of the human race 
_ owes a heavier debt to the religion of Christ than Woman. 
Wherever might is recognised as the sole foundation of 
_ right, wherever selfishness is paramount, the weaker sex 
must suffer, and does suffer. There have no doubt been 
- honourable exceptions to the general treatment of women 
in non-Christian lands. The Roman reverence for women 
is celebrated in many passages of their legend and history, 
and a healthier feeling is recorded to have been character- 
istic of the great Teutonic race in the earliest times. Yet 
under the old Roman law the husband had the power of 
life and death over the wife, and marriage among the 
German tribes was an absolute tyranny on the part of 
the husband which often ended in cruelty and_ bitter 


1 Science of Language, vol. i. p. 127. 


92 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


oppression. It it said that the phrase “buy a wife” for 


“take a wife,” was still used as late as the Middle Ages | 


in many parts of Germany. It was one of the objections 
to Christianity raised by its early enemies that it assigned 
so high a position to woman. What her position was in 
ancient Greece, in Mohammedan countries, and in every 
non-civilised nation, is too familiar to need repetition. She 
owes it to Christianity that she is not altogether either 
the drudge or the plaything of the stronger sex. From 
the first, women exercised great influence in the Church ; 
they were among the most earnest missionaries, the most 
devoted martyrs of the faith. Marriage became a union 


into which both parties entered on equal terms, and — 


though some of the regulations and counsels of the 
Church operated in a less friendly direction—as, for ex- 
ample, the exaltation of celibacy,—it was by Christianity 
that family life was purified and strengthened during the 
period in which European civilisation was taking shape, 
and of that benign influence we now reap the fruits. It 
is only gradually that all this has been brought about, 
but that it was already in germ from the first is evident 
from the saying of an Apostle who was neither altogether 
free from the prejudices, nor inclined wantonly to attack 
the customs of his age on this subject—‘“ In Christ Jesus 
there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free, 
nerther male nor female.” Inthe teaching of the Gospel, 
it has been said, ‘there is nothing of the proud ex- 
clusiveness which left one sex entirely out of the 
consolations and the elevating influence of philosophy ; 
the same strait gate must be passed by“all, the same 


narrow way must be trodden by all, the same eternal — 


home is opened to all”! It is necessary to refer briefly 
to two other points closely connected with this subject ; 
these are the conception of Personal Purity, and the 


1 See Note XXVII. Christianity and the Relations of the Sexes. 


EFFECTS AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF CHRISTIANITY 93 


abolition of Systematic Infanticide. When we grieve 
over the continuance in our social system of evils which 
seem to us incurable, it is well to remember that ancient 
moralists expressed themselves in an equally hopeless 
manner regarding forms of vice which are now practically 
unknown, and, in his ideal Republic, even Plato counselled 
the exposure of children as a social necessity, apparently 
unconscious of the sin and crime with which modern law 
and feeling brands what was a common ancient custom. 
The simple mention of these facts is sufficient to indicate 
the immense strides which society, under the influence 
of Christianity, has made in regard to these important 
points. E 

(2) With respect to Slavery, which was one of the 
most prominent features of the ancient world, it has been 
objected to Christianity, first, that slavery finds no explicit 
discouragement in the New Testament; and second, that 
down to a very recent period it was countenanced and 
practised by more than one Christian nation. Both 
accusations have a certain measure of truth. Christians 
have notoriously been in numerous cases inconsistent in 
their practice, yet it is hardly fair to charge this in- 
consistency upon their religion. And, in reading their 
Bibles, they have often failed to take account of time and 
- circumstance, and so have read a counsel or precept as 
applicable to a different state of matters from that to 
which it was designed to apply. Now that slavery has 
been abolished, who can doubt that Christian principle 
was undermining it, and Christian teaching hostile to it 
from the first? In the Roman Empire during the early 
Christian centuries the evil existed in an exaggerated 
form; but society was founded upon it, and to have 
preached immediate and universal emancipation would 
have been to open the flood-gates of revolution ; it would 
have been “the signal of servile war, and the very name- 


94 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


of the Christian religion would have been forgotten amidst 
the agitation of universal bloodshed.” No condition, in- 
deed, could be more miserable than that of those who 
formed the immense majority of every ancient state, who 
had no civil rights, could enjoy no legal marriage, had 
‘“‘no legal parentage, no property, no right to legacy ; 
could sustain no action before a court, could not be a 
witness, and whose testimony was only legal with torture.” 
In no department is the influence of Christianity more 
clearly shown than in the gradual mitigation of the lot of 
the slave, and the introduction of legal provisions for his 
benefit. The Church anticipated the state in the recogni- 


tion of his rights as man and as citizen of the heavenly — 


kingdom. ‘The Christian teachers and clergymen became 
known as the ‘brothers of the slave,’ and the slaves them- 
Selves were called ‘the freedmen of Christ.’” Numbers of 
those who contended as gladiators in the arena, and were 
“butchered to make a Roman holiday,” were prisoners 
and slaves. The mild contempt of the old philosophers 
availed little to discourage those inhuman but popular 
amusements, which were, however, vehemently denounced 
by Christian preachers, and finally abolished by an act of 
Christian heroism. In the year 404, when a great victory 
was being celebrated in the usual way, at the instant when 


ae 


3 


the swords were drawn and the fighters were about to close 


in their deadly sport, a monk, named Telemachus, leaped 
down and threw himself between them. ‘‘'The gladiators 


shall not fight,” he exclaimed; “are you going to thank. 5 


God by shedding innocent blood?” He perished beneath 
a shower of stones flung by the angry spectators ; the very 


gladiators themselves, it is said, ran him through with — 


their swords. But his end was gained. The eyes of the | 


nobler among the people were opened to the sin and shame 
of their acts ; the blood of a martyr was upon their heads ; 
and never again was that fearful scene permitted. Another 


¥ 


EFFECTS AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF CHRISTIANITY 95 


way in which the Christian spirit attacked and triumphed 
over such institutions as that of slavery was by the stress 
which it laid not only on the negative but the positive 
side of the truth, by the manner in which it taught the 
value and true dignity of labour. Christ and his Apostles 
by word and example made this a prominent feature of 
Christian morals. Work became honoured under the new 
religion, and slave labour was worsted in the competition 
with the more productive toil of the free. 

. (3) Our next point is the development of the Christian 
spirit of Charety. Selfishness was the ruling principle of 
the ancient world. Love was the new, yet old, command- 

ment introduced by Christianity. Christians realised the 
idea of brotherhood not only among themselves, but in 
_ their relations with their non-Christian neighbours in a 
manner at which the heathen could not but marvel. 

“When, in the terrible pestilences with which Carthage 
and Alexandria were visited in the third and fourth 
centuries of the Christian era, the sick and dying were 
abandoned by their heathen relatives, it was by Christians 
that they were received and cared for.” The poor became 
- objects of compassion and sympathetic help. The history 
_ of the Church is truly a history of benevolent schemes and 
institutions. It may be fearlessly claimed as due to 
Christianity that, even beyond the pale of the Church, 
love to one’s neighbour—‘“the Service of Man”—is 
acknowledged as the supreme guide of action. “ Christian- 
ity for the first time made charity a rudimentary virtue, 
giving it the foremost place in the moral type, and in the 


exhortations of its teachers. . . . Even in the days of 
persecution, collections for the relief of the poor were 
made at the Sunday meetings. ... A Roman lady, 


named Fabiola, in the fourth century, founded at Rome, 
as an act of penance, the first public hospital; and the 
charity planted by that woman’s hand overspread the - 


96 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


world, and will alleviate, to the end of time, the darkest 
anguish of humanity. Another hospital was soon after 
founded by St. Pammachius; another of great celebrity 
by St. Basil, at Caesarea. St. Basil also erected at Caesarea 
what was probably the first asylum for lepers.” ! 

(4) War is one of the evils that afflict mankind which 
Christianity has not yet succeeded in suppressing. That 
such, however, is its tendency as well as its aim none can 
seriously doubt. We sometimes hear war defended on 
the ground that too long a period of peace brings about 
national effeminacy and corruption; that war is needed, 
like a violent storm, to clear the atmosphere, and may 
thus even contribute to progress. It is needless to say 
that true Christianity recognises no such necessity. There 
are other modes of strengthening the national character 
and checking the inroads of corruption. War is only 
justifiable when it is in the interest of justice. Every 
contest not necessary in defence of national independence 
or national possessions is a crime. But we look forward 
to the adoption of a course with regard to this question 
somewhat similar to that which has been followed under 
Christian influences in regard to private war and duelling. 
These have been displaced by a sense of justice and a 
willingness to appeal to properly and impartially con- 
stituted tribunals. So may we hope that nations will 
arrive not only at a far greater development of inter- 
national law (itself a notable growth of modern times), 
but be inspired with a better feeling towards each other, 
and find in arbitration, or some such expedient, a means 
of satisfactorily ending disputes— ; 


1 Lecky, History of European Morals, vol. ii. pp. 84, 85. See also 
Encyclopedia Britannica, 9th Edition, vol. xii. p. 301—‘‘ Although 
in ancient times there may have been places for the reception of 
strangers and travellers, it seems at least doubtful if there was any- 
thing of the nature of a charitable institution for the reception of the — 
sick, such as existed after the introduction of Christianity.” 


If 
; ee 


_ EFFECTS AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF CHRISTIANITY 97 


Till the war-drum throbs no longer, and the battle flags are 
furled 
In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.” 


Meanwhile, many of the most terrible features of 
warfare are mitigated by provisions of humanity and 
mercy ; the Red Cross is seen and respected on every 
battle-field. Even here the hand is seen at work of Him 
whose advent was announced by angels as bringing “ on 


earth peace,” and who was Himself the ‘“ Prince of Peace.” 


(5) Further illustrations of this great subject, which 
must, however, be studied in works specially devoted to 
it, may be found in the history of the abolition of torture, 


in that of the progress of education, and in the growth of 
the spirit of chivalry, which has been described as one of 


4 the “fairest of the after-growths when the purifying flood 
had swept over the decaying empire and the stagnant 


~ Church—the results of which wave of Teutonic manliness 


and faith in goodness all the subsequent corruptions of 
civilisation have not succeeded in destroying.” One of 


| the most interesting and instructive of the departments 


in which the power of Christianity has thus been 


‘ manifested is that of its relation to Art and to the various 
forms of culture. ‘To all of these Christianity has come 


_ asa means of extending and deepening experience, it has 


taught them to speak a new language ; it has also given to 
life its unity by impressing upon it a moral purpose, by 
setting before it a great hope, and by making all its 


‘powers, opportunities, and movements subservient to the 


realisation of a great ideal, the coming of the kingdom of 
God. Christianity has proved itself an influence in the 
world, with which no other is comparable—the power of 


God unto salvation, not only to individuals, but in the 


social and national life of man. 


CHAP DER ahs 
CUMULATIVE EFFECT OF THE CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


1. BrsrpEs the separate force of the different lines 
of an argument, there may be a special cogency in 
the manner in which these distinct lnes converge 
upon a common centre. ‘This, in the case of 
Christianity, may be taken as one of the chief 
grounds of its acceptance by men of ordinary © 
capacities, opportunities, and education. 

2. The opponents of Christianity commonly seek. 
to isolate the positions maintained by the Christian 
apologist in order to attack them more effectually. 

3. The cumulative effect of the Christian 
evidences is of great importance in view of the 
unique character of Christianity and its place in the 
world. 

4. The following points, in addition to those 
already considered, contribute to the formation of 
such a cumulative argument : 

(1) The preparation for Christ in Israel. 

(2) The appearance of Christ at the time when 
Messianic expectation was at its height. 

(3) That the religion of Christ is coextensive 
with the civilisation of the world. 


CUMULATIVE EFFECT OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 99 


(4) The unity of plan and spirit in the books of 
the Bible. 

(5) The confirmation of Scripture by memorial 
ordinances and institutions, as the Lord’s Supper 
and the Church itself. 

5. The evidence of Christianity with which all 
others will stand or fall is the impression produced 
by the Personality of Jesus Christ. All others 
must be regarded as subsidiary and supplementary 
to this. 


1. It has been the aim in this manual to assume as little 
as possible that would not be generally conceded. Hence 
there are several branches of Christian evidence to which 
little or no reference has so far been made, notably those 
discussions which circle round the Bible as a book or 
collection of writings. Christianity being not only a 
spiritual but a historical religion, having its centre in a 
Person and its records in a Literature,—the nature of 
these records, their contents, and the history of their 
transmission, form no unimportant part of the general 


considerations by which it is commended to us. Much 


obviously depends on the date of the Gospel narratives, and 
_ their relation to each other as well as to the other writings 
of the New Testament; and all this is proper matter of 
evidence. Then there is the great subject of Prophecy, 
the correspondence of Prediction with Event, which, while 
it may be properly regarded as a special case of miracle, 
has features which practically constitute it a separate line 
of proof. But though we do not dwell at length upon 
these points, the mention of them may remind us that a 
force greater almost than that of any separate argument 
resides in the manner in which a number of different and 
independent lines of argument converge upon a common 
centre. Union is strength, as the proverb tells us, and “a 


100 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


threefold cord is not quickly broken.” Of the many forms. 
and departments of Christian evidence, some will have 
greater cogency for one mind, while other minds will be 
more impressed by other arguments ; but all must acknow- 
ledge the cumulative force and effect of all combined in 
one great argument. ‘‘ Probable proofs,” as Bishop Butler 
remarks, “‘ by being added, not only increase the evidence, 
but multiply it.” ‘‘The conviction arising from this kind 
of proof,” as he elsewhere observes, ‘‘ may be compared to 
what they call the effect in architecture or other works of 
art; a result fron: a great number of things so and so 
disposed, and taken into one view.” In a criminal trial 
the guilt of the prisoner may be abundantly manifest, and 
yet it may be possible to show that each of the lines of 
proof by which it is established is by itself inconclusive. 
It may be safely said that it is by a process of reasoning 
such as that now indicated that an intelligent Christian of 
ordinary education and opportunities justifies his belief. 
He may not have the time nor the requisite ability and 
training to study closely and weigh carefully what may 
be advanced on the subject of religion. How is he, then, 
to have any intelligent faith at all? Is it not that while 
his hold upon any one line of evidence may be weak, the 
religion appeals to him on so many sides, that his faith 
acquires a solidity and steadfastness like that of a tree 
which sends down into the earth roots of which the fibres 
may be individually slender, but which by reason of their 
number, their interlacing, and the different directions in 
which they penetrate the soil, take a hold upon it which 
the stormiest breeze is not able to dislodge ? 

2. It is obviously the policy of the opponents of 
Christianity to ignore the cumulative force of the Chris- 
tian evidences, and to treat each as if the whole burden 
of the argument rested upon it alone. Desiring to over- 
turn the tree, they cut its roots fibre by fibre, Many 


> 
- is 


CUMULATIVE EFFECT OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 101 


persons lose their attachment to Christian truth, and sink 
into scepticism, because they have allowed their minds to 
dwell upon one kind of difficulty and have left out of sight 
the countless considerations which this difficulty leaves 
untouched, and so, losing patience, for the sake of one 
difficulty abandon the whole body of truth. And what 
these do, it may be unwittingly, the foes of religion do 
systematically. They are well aware of the advantage of 
thus concentrating attention upon single points. If any- 
where in the wide universe they can find a single fact 
which can be adduced as parallel to, or inconsistent with, 


~ any statement which seems to be in favour of Christianity, 


they direct attention to it, and believe that so far they 


have counteracted the effect of the Christian evidences. 
But the problem, as it has been justly said, ‘is not: Can 


_we explain away this or that element by mere chance or 
natural causes? but, How do the elements all come to 


meet in one and the same centre? Was it by chance that 
all the military roads led to ancient Rome, or was it 


_ because it was the imperial city?” ! 


3. The cumulative aspect of Christian evidences becomes 


of great importance when we consider that the religion of 


Christ is in a certain way a unique effect. There is 
nothing with which it can be compared. When we have, 
for example, a single instance of a form in nature, it is 


difficult to pronounce whether it is the outcome of law, 
or the result of chance or caprice. Only comparison can, 
as a rule, determine this question. But when the object 
is of complicated construction, and exhibits internal 
adaptations, a conclusion all but unchallengeable may be 


formed. To use, for a purpose somewhat different from 


the original one, Paley’s celebrated illustration of a watch 
found in-a desert,—on the supposition that it was the only 


specimen of the kind known, it is evident that any con- 


1 Mair, Studies in the Christian Evidences, p. 317. 


102 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


clusion regarding it must be drawn, not from a comparison 
of it with other objects, but from a consideration of its 
several parts in their mutual relation and in their apparent 
unity of purpose. As soon as we discovered that the 


watch was capable of measuring time we should feel 


certain that it was constructed with this very end in view. 
It is on such grounds that the inference of a presiding in- 
telligence in every similar case is based. And in propor- 
tion to the number of the parts, their complexity and the 
clearness of the purpose which they are in combination 
adapted to serve, is the confidence with which we rely 
upon the inference. It may be impossible, for example, 
to decide absolutely between those who hold that this is 
the best of all possible worlds (Optimism), and those who 
hold that there cannot be any worse than this (Pessimism), 
for the simple reason that this is the only world we are 
acquainted with, and our opportunities of comparison are 
therefore restricted. But the fact that we know no other 
world than our own does not preclude us from considering 
and deciding whether the arrangements of the world argue 
design on the part of its Creator ; whether history reveals 
a moral purpose, a process of disciplining, educating, 
elevating mankind ; whether it is likely that there is ‘‘ one 
Divine event ”—however far off it may be yet—toward 
which ‘‘the whole Creation moves.” To discover this we 
must observe how all things work together, how the several 
parts conspire to compass the end, how every part of the 
Creation makes some contribution towards the fulfilment 
of the design. And when we consider the special con- 
tribution made towards this great purpose by the Christian 
religion, we note how its position is in like manner due to 
the harmony and combination of many separate and in- 
dependent lines of evidence, so that, although there is 
nothing else which can be put into direct comparison with 
it, we cannot reasonably ascribe it to chance. The influ- 


| CUMULATIVE EFFECT OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 103 


ences which have combined to make that religion what it 
is, were for the most part independent in their origin, and 
were only in the course of historical development united 
and made to bear upon the one great end. Even, for ex- 
ample, if we could believe that the life of the Founder of 
Christianity, in all its originality and wisdom, was the off- 
spring of human powers of invention, the development of 
this ideal at the precise time when, as history shows, 
circumstances were most favourable to the propagation of 
the religion of which it was so powerful and even indis- 
pensable a factor, is a coincidence so remarkable that its 
being a mere coincidence is more improbable than any 
claims which have ever been urged on behalf of Christianity. 
A contemplation of the external world, of human nature, 


and of the course of history, gives rise to a problem to 


which we may fearlessly assert that Christ alone is the 
key. And the more complicated the conditions of the 


problem, and the more fully and exactly these are satisfied 


by Christianity, the more assured is our faith, and the 
more indisputable the certainty that here alone the true 
solution of the problem is to be found. 

4. In selecting a few illustrations of the concurrence of 


various lines of proof in the case of Christianity, we shall 


dwell by preference on those which have not hitherto in 


these pages been brought prominently into view. 


(1) Was it an accident that such a personality as that 
of Christ should appear in the only Monotheistic nation 
of the ancient world? Judaism, Mohammedanism, and 
Christianity are the only religions acknowledging one God, 


the supreme ruler of heaven and earth; and of these the 


second and third are both the offspring of the first. ‘ And 
if we are asked,” says Max Miiller, “how it was that 


- Abraham possessed not only the primitive intuition of God 


as He had revealed Himself to all mankind, but passed 
through the denial of all other gods to the knowledge of the 


104 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


one God, we are content to answer that it was by a special 
Divine Revelation . . . granted to one man, and handed 
down from him to Jews, Christians, and Mohammedans, 
to all who believe in the God of Abraham.”! Greece 
might produce a Socrates and India a Buddha, but it was 
only on the soil of Judeea that Christ appeared. Is it too 
much to say, or is it not rather the most natural explana- 
tion of the phenomena, that Israel was a preparation for 
Christ? Then “at the central point of the world’s history 
—central not only in time, but in historical import, the 
man Jesus arose, and claimed to be, in a sense altogether 
apart from other men, the Teacher and the Saviour of the 
world.” The claim stands absolutely alone in,the world’s 
history. Neither Buddha nor Confucius took up this 
ground. And what is more strange, the claim, whatever 
view men have taken of Christ, has been generally con- 
ceded. He has been, and is, the Light of the World. 

(2) Then we have the fact that marvellous as was the 
appearance of Jesus, not only was there a historical 
preparation made for it, but it was distinctly expected. 
It is not necessary to enter here upon the subject of 
prophecy. It is sufficient to refer to the fact that nega- 
tive critics like Strauss and Renan fully admit the exist- 
ence of such an expectation. Upon its reality and 
vividness they build their theory of the life of Christ, 
which they regard as a largely fictitious narrative based 
upon the assumption that the prophecies must needs be 
fulfilled. It may be admitted that, had the expectation 
referred to merely given rise to claims, to the appearance 
of false Messiahs, whose pretensions were drowned in 
blood or obliterated by time, there would be nothing for 
which natural causes would not account. But claims 
which were not only put forward in accordance with 
expectation, but have been vindicated in the face of all 


1 Chips from a German Workshop, vol. i. pp. 378, 374. 


1 .£ 
Se 


lee 


CUMULATIVE EFFECT OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 105 


mankind and have justified the expectation, cannot be 
passed over thus. ‘The question presses for settlement— 
Coincidence, or Design ? 

(3) Is it accident, we ask again, that the Religion 
founded by this Jewish Messiah is coextensive with the 
civilisation of the world? ‘‘ Beyond the pale of Christen- 


_ dom, the great races of humanity which in past ages have 


shown equal capacities for the highest culture, have at 
this present time no single representative nation, Turanian, 
Semitic, or Aryan, in which liberty, philosophy, nay, even 
physical science, with its serene indifference to moral or 
spiritual truth, have a settled home or practical develop- 
ment. . . . Those nations have been pre-eminent in every 


age which profess at least to acknowledge Christ as their 


Lord, while we have observed the rapid disintegration or 


- ruin of communities which have corrupted or abjured His 


' religion.”1 ‘Look where we will, a great fact as wide as 


the world arrests our attention. Wherever there is 


_ Christianity, we see superiority and growth; wherever 


Christianity is not, we see inferiority and stagnation. So 
far-reaching is the correspondence that it cannot be acci- 


dental. Either Christianity raises those who receive it, or 
it commends itself to all rising nations. And each of 


‘ these suppositions implies unique excellence... . A 
_ survey of the present state and past history of our race 


leaves no room for doubt that Christianity is the source of 
_ the pre-eminence of the foremost nations. . . . In view of 
all this, it is not too much to say that Christianity has 


saved the world. When Christ was born the world was 
helplessly and hopelessly sinking. For many long centuries 
it has been rising. And for this great change no cause 
can be found except the influence of Christ and His 
followers,” 2 


1 Canon Cook, in Modern Scepticism. 
2 Beet, Credentials of the Gospel, pp. 84, 88. 


106 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


(4) The literary problem presented by the Bible itself 
is one of the most conspicuous examples of the principle — 
with which we are now dealing. Here we have a large — 
number of documents, produced throughout a long course — 
of centuries by many different authors. Yet it is 
substantially the same theme which inspires, the same 
spirit which pervades, the whole. ‘These sacred books 
form a progressive organic religious unity, such as is 
found in the literature of no other nation. . . . However 
different the authors, and however distant from each — 
other in time or place, their contributions, instead of 
coming into collision, harmonise, and fall into their 
proper place in the organic growth and whole, until the 
culmination is reached in the New Testament.”! This 
extraordinary development can be paralleled nowhere else. 
Ts it accident or art, or is it inspiration and providential 
cuidance—inspiration certainly not in any mechanical 
sense, but in the sense of the presence and influence of a 
spirit, flowing from one source and making for one, and 
that the highest, end ? 

(5) With the testimony of Scripture, again, coincides 
the significance of the witness rendered by the existence 
of the Church, and also of the Sacraments, especially the 
Lord’s Supper. The difficulty of securing the acceptance 
and adoption by contemporaries, or almost contemporaries, — 
of anything of the nature of a monument or memorial, 
unless that occurred of which it is a memorial, is 
sufficiently evident, and has been repeatedly pointed 
out. ‘Narratives may be forged, but monuments and_ 
memorials cannot be forged, and memorial ordinances 
least of all... . The observance of the fourth of July 
by the Americans, as the anniversary of their in- 
dependence, must continue for ever an unassailable proof 
of the event. The celebration of the Passover is, Inde- | 


1 Mair, Studies, pp. 291, 292. 


f 


CUMULATIVE EFFECT OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 107 


pendently of the narrative in Exodus, an excellent proof 
of the deliverance of Israel from Egypt. . . . People 
will not allow such an observance to be palmed off 
upon them; they will not readily lend themselves to 
a gross public deception; and hence it follows that a 
memorial ordinance, reaching back to the age of the 
event commemorated, is evidence of the very highest 
kind.”! The application of this principle to the Christian 
Church, which was born on the day on which Jesus 
rose from the dead, and baptized with the Spirit on 
Pentecost, and to such institutions as the Lord’s Supper 
and the Lord’s Day which date from the earliest times, 
is clear. We have only to consider how much is 
involved in the admission of the primitive character of 
these practices, to see that they bring us into the very 
presence of the Master, and are a warrant to us of 


much that has been taught concerning Him and in His 


name. 

5. The above examples will be sufficient to illustrate 
the nature and strength of the cumulative argument in 
favour of Christianity. It might be shown in the same 


way that all the various threads of the External or 
_ Historical Evidences, as they are called, may be combined 
_ into one strong cable of proof, and that this again unites 
with the various branches of the Internal Evidence to 
render the chance of error or mistake infinitesimally small. 
-And when the testimony of personal experience is added 


to all this, or—as perhaps it should be stated—when 


all this comes by way of confirmation of personal ex- 


perience of the power and of the fruits of Religion,” the 
force of the argument becomes little less than demonstra- 


tive. At the same time the result of the whole inquiry 


will above all depend upon the effect produced on mind 


: 1 Mair, Studies, pp. 307, 308. 
2 See Note XXVIII. Personal Assurance of Religious Truth. 


108 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


and heart by the Personality of Jesus Christ. How that 

Personality shines out from the “record of three short 
years of active life,” how it has transformed history, we 
have already seen. If it makes no impression upon-the ~ 
mind brought into contact with it, it is greatly to be 
feared that the most elaborate and closely reasoned — 
argument will have been constructed in vain. But if ¥. 
Christ’s character and life have attracted and touched the — 
heart of the inquirer, the other considerations involved 
will strengthen the impression thus made; the evidences + 
of Christianity will not indeed be regarded as useless or | 
superfluous, but will be employed as subsidiary and _ 
supplementary, confirming faith and placing it upon a 
reasonable basis. And what, we may ask in conclusion, 
és the impression which must be made upon any sound _ 
moral nature by the unique excellence of the spirit and 
life of Christ ? Can any heart not utterly hardened and — 
dead fail to acknowledge the beauty of holiness, the ex- 
haustless depths of love which he manifested? “Jesus of — 
Nazareth,” it has been eloquently said, “puts forth, as — 
the solution of the problem that was wearying the world — 
to death, simply Himself. In contemplation of His peer- — 
less goodness, in passionate gratitude for His wondrous 
love, in constant communion with His soul made perfect a 
for us through sufferings, He proclaimed that the one ~ 
possible remedy for the world’s death-sickness lay. From 
Him alone could flow the fountains of living water; and — 
those alone united to Him could bear the fruits that — 
should be for the healing of the nations. Did ever 
any one of the sons of men dare to take upon him — 
a burden like this; to proclaim in the hearing of angels — 
and men that he and the hope of the world were one? 
The purity, the perfectness, the self-control of the moral 
teaching of Christ forbid us to harbour for a moment 
the notion of fanatic enthusiasm. And if this claim of — 


v6 had their source and foundation in a lie. Do lies 
make men so pure and good; do they keep their strength 
so long ? Nay rather, there is nothing strong for the 
Ss aut the truth of God; and earth has ae to- day 


> Re Sip 
<e rea 


NOTES 


Note I. (page 3). ‘“‘Apotocy” anp “ APOLOGETICS.” 


Apologetics is the science which determines the prin- 
| ciples on which Christianity is to be defended or vindi- 
cated, which studies the essential nature and relations 
of Christianity on the one side, and of the principles 
opposed to it on the other. Apology is the defence itself 
as addressed to a particular set of difficulties or objec- 
tions ; Apologetics is the science of the principles on which 
Apologies are to be constructed and elaborated. It natur- 
ally exhibits a greater number of changes in point of form 
| than any other branch of Theological Science, because it 
| has had to accommodate itself to the changing circum- 
_ stances of the times and the varying charges of objectors. 
Theoretically, of course, it need not require such constant 
adaptation. An examination into the basis of Christian 
belief, which would justify it to the reflective consciousness 
as firm and convincing, might conceivably place it beyond 
the reach of attack. The grounds of the Christian faith 
might be so set forth that the difficulties of Scepticism 
would be met and obviated before they were actually 
raised. And the result of an inquiry so conducted might 
be less liable to change than those partial investigations 
| which are made with the view of meeting particular objec- 
tions. Ebrard, an able expounder of the science, adopts 


112 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


this conception of its function. ‘‘ Christian Apologetics,” 
he says, ‘‘is distinguished from the mere Apology by this, 
that it is not determined in course and method by the 
attacks appearing casually at any point of time, but from 
the nature of Christianity itself deduces the method of © 
defence of the same, and consequently the defence itself. 
Every apologetic is an apology, but every apology is not 
an apologetic. Apologetics is that science which deduces — 
from the nature of Christianity itself what classes of attack 
are generally possible, what different sides of Christian j 
truth may possibly be assailed, and what false principles — 
lie at the bottom of these attacks” (Apologetics, Eng. — 
transl., vol. i. p. 3). Vinet has eloquently expressed the — 
same thought when he says regarding the ideal Apologetic — 
that it is more than the casual product of momentary 
needs: “It would not wait for the assault, it would be — 
itself aggressive; it would not concern itself with the — 
need of one age, but with the need of all time; it would | 
not assail one form of unbelief, but, having exhumed from — 
the depths of the human soul the principle of all forms 
of unbelief, it would include them all, anticipating those — 
which have not yet appeared, and ready with an answer . 
to objections which have not yet been formulated. For 
that end it would penetrate further into the region of — 
doubt than the boldest doubters themselves, would under- — 
mine the very abyss which they have excavated, would 
become unbelieving in its turn with an unbelief still more 
determined and more profound ; in short, would probe the _ 
wound to its fullest extent in the hope of reaching and 
removing the very root of the evil. This kind of Apology } 
is so different from all others that it requires another 
name. Religion no longer appears as a pleader, but as a 
judge ; the suppliant’s humility gives place to the arbiter’s- 
authority ; Apology is no longer merely justification, —it is 
laudation, homage, worship, and the edifice which it rears- 


‘aoe 


HISTORY OF APOLOGETICS 113 


is no longer a citadel, but a temple” (Quoted in Grétillat, 
 Baposé de Theol. Syst., vol. ii. p. 11). The truth in the 
views thus expressed seems to be that Apologetics should 
not content itself with warding off the casual attack ; it 
should do this on a system, on settled principles chosen 
~ beforehand ; it should endeavour as much as possible to 
| anticipate the attacks and the quarters from which they 

may come ; otherwise it may be found that there is incon- 
sistency in the methods of defence, and the concentration 
_ of force upon the point attacked may leave the faith upon 
some other side altogether undefended. In practice it is 
found that the result aimed at by the distinguished writers 
| ‘referred to can only be partially attained. It is difficult if 
i not impossible for the advocate of religion to anticipate 
objections which have not been actually raised ; it is still 
’ more difficult to forestall the ingenuity of the adversary and 
| the endless combinations and fresh surprises which it enables 
 himtomake. “Nothing,” says Mr. Balfour (Youndations of 
- Belief, p. 218), “so quickly waxes old as apologetics, unless, 
| perhaps, it be criticism.” Apologetics must therefore con- 

tinue to be rather a systematic exhibition of the methods 
= have been found effective in the past than an attempt 
_ to anticipate those which may be required in time to come. 


Nore II. (page 3). History or APOLOGETICS. 


The History of Apologetics is of course the reverse side 
of the History of Unbelief, though there may be chapters 
in the latter which are not reflected in the former. The 
History may be divided into jive periods, or, if we in- 

clude that of the New Testament, into six. The latter 
division has been advocated on the twofold ground that 
much in the Gospels, Acts and Epistles is of a really 
apologetic character, shows our Lord and his Apostles 
/ on the ‘defensive in face of the misapprehensions and 
a Ate 


114 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


persistent misrepresentations of their day; and _ that, 
this being so, we may find in these writings models of 
what such defensive statements should be. The other 
five divisions are (1) The Patristic Period; (2) The | 
Middle Ages ; (3) From the Reformation to the Eighteenth — 
Century; (4) The Eighteenth Century ; and (5) The Modern 
Period. The first included the times of persecution, 
the struggle of Christianity with Judaism and with | 
Heathenism, and its survival on the fall of the Western — 
Empire. The second period, as became the Ages of | 
Faith, was not fruitful in Apologetic Literature. The 
third was the age of Grotius (De Veritate Religionis 
Christiane) and Pascal (Thoughts on Religion). The © 
fourth, in which Deism flourished, is, after the Patristic | 
period, the most important in the History of Apologetics ; _ 
its most famous contribution to the subject was the Analogy — 
of Religion to the Constitution and Course of Nature of 
Bishop Butler. The fifth has been marked by the distinct — 
reaction against the unbelief of the preceding century and — 
the rise of a new spirit in England, France, and Germany. 
That the battle is not over is evident from such pheno- 
mena as the theories of Strauss and his followers, or asthe | 
Positivism and Agnosticism of to-day. But there is also — 
among us much living religion, and there have appeared . 
in France and Germany as well as in Britain and | 
America many doughty champions of the faith. 


Nors III. (page 10). THe PsycHorocican ATMOSPHERE, — | 


“The power of authority is never more subtle and © 
effective than when it produces a psychological ‘atmo- 
sphere’ or ‘climate’ favourable to the life of certain modes | 
of belief, unfavourable, and even fatal, to the life of others” 
(A. J. Balfour, Youndations of Belief, p. 206). ; 


BIAS OR PREPOSSESSION 115 


Nore IV. (page 10). Bras or Prepossession. 


_ This is what Bacon meant by the Zdola of the Cavern, 
ef. Vovum Organum, Bk. I. aph. 53-58. ‘“ Mankind,” he 
says, “are attached to particular sciences and trains of 
thought, either because they believe themselves to have 
originated and discovered them, or because they 
have bestowed their greatest labour upon them, and 
have become most familiar with them. ... As a general 
rule, every one who contemplates the aan of things 
should distrust whatever most readily takes and holds 
captive his own intellect, and should use so much the 
more caution in coming to determinations of this kind, 
that his understanding may remain impartial and clear.” 

Mr. Romanes, in Thoughts on Religion, pp. 100, 101, 
“makes a remarkable and instructive confession with regard 
to his advance from his earlier to his later views on the 
sl bject of religion. “ As far,” he says, “as introspection can 
carry one, it does not appear to me that the modifications 
which my views have undergone since the publication of 
my previous Candid Examination! are due so much to 
logical processes of the intellect, as to the sub-conscious 
(and therefore more or less unanalysable) influences due to 
the ripening experiences of life. The extent to which this 
‘is true is seldom, if ever, realised, although it is practically 
exemplified every day by the sobering caution which ad- 
-vancing age exercises upon the mind. Not so much by 
$ any above-board play of syllogism as by some underhand 
| cheating of consciousness, do the accumulating experiences 
of life and of thought slowly enrich the judgment. And 
‘this, one need hardly say, is especially true in such 
regions of thought as present the most tenuous media for 


a : A Candid Examination of Theism, by “ Physicus,” in Triibner’s 
English and Foreign Philosophical Library, 1878. 


116 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


the progress of thought by the comparatively clumsy | 
means of syllogistic locomotion. For the farther we | 
ascend from the solid ground of verification, the less | 
confidence should we place in our wings of speculation, | 
while the more do we find the practical’ wisdom of such | 
intellectual caution, or distrust of ratiocination, as can | 
be given only by experience. ‘Therefore, most of all is | 
this the case in those departments of thought which are | 
farthest. from the region of our sensuous life—viz. | 
metaphysics and religion. And, as a matter of fact, it is” 
just in these departments of thought that we find the : 
rashness of youth most aera to the discipline in- | 
question by the experience of age.” 


Nore V. (page 14). Unrversaniry or Rexicion. 


The universal prevalence of Religion early attracted the | 
attention of thinking men. ‘You may see states,” says | 
Plutarch, “without walls, without laws, without coins, | 
without writing; but a people without a god, without — ‘ 
prayers, without religious exercises and sacrifices, has no 1] 
man seen” (Adv. Colot. Epic. c. 31, quoted in Luthardt, | 
Fundamental Truths, p. 147). “This,” says Cicero, 
“may further be brought as an irrefragable argument that — | 
there are gods, that there never was any nation so barbarous, | 
nor any people in the world so savage, as to be without 
some notion of gods; many have wrong notions of the — 
gods, for that is the nature or ordinary consequence of bad — 
‘customs, yet all allow that there is a certain divine nature | 
or energy. Nor does this proceed from the conversation — 
of men, or the agreement of philosophers; it is not an 
opinion established by institutions or by laws; but no — 
doubt in every case the consent of all nations is to be 
looked on as a law of nature” (Quest. Tusc. I. 13). 


RELIGION AND NATIONALITY 117 


- Mr. Romanes, in an essay printed in Thoughts on 
| Religion, pp. 81-83, founds an argument for the exist- 
ence of God upon the “religious instincts” of man- 
‘kind. He points out that “on the one hand these 
‘instincts are not of such obvious use to the species as are 
those of morality; and, on the other hand, while they 
_ are unquestionably very general, very persistent, and 
very powerful, they do not appear to serve any ‘end’ or 
‘purpose’ in the scheme of things, unless we accept the 
theory which is given of them by those in whom they 
are most strongly developed.” He thinks the argument 
of legitimate force, because ‘‘if the religious instincts of 
the human race point to no reality as their object, eo 
J out of analogy with all other instinctive endowments.” 
He does not consider it invalidated “by such facts as 
t that widely different intellectual conceptions touching the 
character of this object are entertained by different races 
of mankind,” but thinks that it so far justifies the in- 
ference “that, if the general order of Nature is due to 
mind, the character of that mind is such as it is con- 
C eived to be by the most highly developed form of 
religion.” 


." VI. (page 14). Reticion anp NATIONALITY. 


It is when we turn to social life, to the history of 
Bis that the influence of Religion becomes indisputably 
manifest. The life and progress of nations are greatly 
dependent upon the vitality of Religion, upon them Reli- 
gious Scepticism comes like a blight. And in proportion 
the religion is high and pure, its power for good will 
the greater; the forces within it will work for the 
improvement and elevation of those to whom it comes. 
Ne 0 ) Tess. a voice than that of Goethe speaks unequivocally - 


4 


118 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


in this sense—‘“ All epochs in which faith, under whatever 
form, has prevailed, have been brilliant, heart-eclevating, 
and fruitful, both to contemporaries and to posterity. All 
epochs, on the contrary, in which unbelief, under whatever 
form, has maintained a sad supremacy, even if they should 
glitter for the moment with a false splendour, vanish from 
the memory of posterity, because none care to trouble 
themselves with the knowledge of that which has been 
barren.” Max Miiller records the startling impression 
made upon him when, many years before, he heard the 

philosopher Schelling ask and answer the questions, : 
What makes an Ethnos? What is the true origin of a 
people? How did human beings become a people? 
“Community of blood produces families, clans, possibly 

races, but it does not produce that higher and purely 

moral feeling which binds men together and makes them > 
a people.” ‘This is the work of Language and Religion, | 
but Religion is even a more powerful agent than Language. 
The answer, Max Miiller says, has been confirmed more 
and more by subsequent researches into the history of — 
both. He refers also to Sir Henry Maine as forcibly — 
pointing out that in ancient times Religion as a divine 
influence was underlying and supporting every relation of 

life, and every social institution (Introduction to the 
Science of Religion, pp. 145, 152). | 


Nore VIL. (page 15). SvusstrruTEs For RELIGION. 


French writers seem particularly partial to taking up 
the position that Religion in general, and Christianity in. 
particular, is only a temporary stage on the march to 
something beyond, that they must one day resign their 
place as guides of humanity in favour of Philosophy or 
Science. Jouffroy argued strenuously in favour of the 


SUBSTITUTES FOR RELIGION 119 


former, and Guyau, an able writer, whose premature death 
has been much lamented, in a notable book, entitled The 
Trreligion of the Future, endeavoured to point out what 
motives can be brought to bear upon man to secure 
the fulfilment especially of his social duties, when Chris- 
tianity shall have been finally dethroned, and Science 
reigns in its stead. We allude here only to earnest writers, 
to those who show that the great problems with which 
Religion deals have touched their minds and hearts. The 
frivolous, sneering, or immoral sceptic scarcely needs and 
does not deserve serious treatment. We are thankful 
to recognise, however, that in many, perhaps a majority of 
instances, what is known as Modern Thought, with all its 
opposition to traditional forms of thought and belief, is 
grave and serious, almost worthy to be called religious. 
Its aims are high, its spirit is pure. It has a genuine 
enthusiasm of humanity. All this may be freely admitted, 
even where it must be held as questionable, whether it 
~ could have existed, or would long continue operative, apart 
from that which it so energetically repudiates. 

The difficulty is not to get rid of religious teaching, or 
even of religious influence; it is to get rid of the native 
bent to rest on something outside ourselves, and above all 
to get another power which will do as effectually what 
Religion now does. What example can be more instruc- 
tive than that of John Stuart Mill, one of the clearest 
and most candid thinkers of our time? “I was brought 
up,” he says in his Autobiography (p. 38), ‘from the first 
without any religious belief in the ordinary acceptation of 
the term.” Yet we find him elsewhere admitting the 
beneficial effect of a belief in God and immortality in that 
“it makes life and human nature a far greater thing to 
the feelings.” He renders also a sublime homage to the 
character and teachings of Christ. And in his later years, 


rE after the death of his wife, he tells how in order to “feel 


120 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


her still near me, I bought a cottage as close as possible — 
to the place where she is buried.” ... “Her memory” 
—and there is a deep pathos in the confession—“is to 
me a religion, and her approbation the standard by which, 
summing up as it does all worthiness, I endeavour to — 
_ regulate my life” (Autobeography, p. 251). 


Note VIII. (page 15). Rexicion or IsRrazt. 


The result of the training which Israel received has 
been well described as “a faith in God singularly com- | 
prehensive, sublime, and practical,—a faith which rested, 
not on speculation and reasoning, but on a conviction of © 
God having directly revealed Himself to the spirits of men, — 
and which, while ignoring metaphysical theorising, ascribed 
to God all metaphysical as well as moral perfections; a 
faith which, in spite of its simplicity, so apprehended the 
relationship of God to nature as neither to confound them > 
like Pantheism, nor to separate them like Deism, but to — 
assert both the immanence and the transcendence of the 
divine ; a faith in a living and personal God, the Almighty _ 
and sole Creator, Preserver and Ruler of the world; a 
faith especially in a God holy in all His ways and righteous ~ 
in all His works, who was directing and guiding human — 
affairs to.a destination worthy of His own character, and 
therefore an essentially ethical, elevating and hopeful faith ” 
(Flint, Art. “Theism,” in Hneycl. Brit., 9th Edition, 
pi.239). 


Norte IX. (page 17). 
ARGUMENT FROM THE NECESSITY oF THOUGHT. 


It may be desirable to indicate a little more fully the 4 
nature of this which is called the Ontological Argument, 


ARGUMENT FROM THE NECESSITY OF THOUGHT 121 


It involves principles which lie at the basis of all thought 
whatever, but which comparatively few appreciate, because 
few attempt to analyse the ultimate grounds of their ex- 
perience. When we reflect we find that there are laws of 
reason without which knowledge and intelligence could not 
be, which are given as absolute principles, which we cannot 
conceive as hable to alteration. But these laws of reason 
we also find to be laws of existence. We do not measure or 
reckon only according to mathematical laws, but we find that 
_ the universe, whether in the motion of a plant or a particle, 
whether in the combinations of chemical substances or in 
the flashing of a beam of light, conforms strictly to those 
laws. What is that in which both have their ground, 
which is the principle of their correspondence, the funda- 
mental term at once of thought and of being? It is the 
Absolute, the Idea of ideas, the Existence of existences. 
Reflection further shows us that the Absolute must not 
_ only be independent of anything outside of itself,—which 
is involved in the very meaning of the term,—but complete 
within itself, beeng in its fulness and totality. It must be 
one and indivisible, unique, infinite, yet not that mere 
abstraction for. which the formula of Pantheists from 
_ Spinoza to Strauss has been — ‘All determination in 
negation.” On the contrary, the Absolute must be con- 
ceived as infinite on its positive side, including in itself all 
perfection ; not a monotony of existence, but the ground 
_ on which all positive qualities may be displayed. Whether 
these qualities are displayed is, however, neither affirmed 
nor denied by the Ontological Argument, which simply 
establishes not the identity, but the common origin and 
ground, of thought and existenee. Whether it be that the 
mind and the world have the same author, and have thus 
been adapted to each other, or that there is some more 
- tInysterious relation between them, we can scarcely avoid 
s recognising that the power which has imposed conditions - 


122 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


on knowledge must be the same as that which has imposed 


corresponding conditions on the world, that as all our 


thoughts run up into one all-inclusive thought, so all | 
existences are in their nature referable to one primal and — 
all-inclusive existence, and that there must be that in which — 


thought and existence ultimately meet. 


Norse X. (page 26). NATURALISM. 


“ Who would pay the slightest attention to naturalism — 
if it did not force itself into the retinue of science, — 


assume her livery, and claim, as a kind of poor relation, in ~ 


some sort to represent her authority and to speak with her 


voice? Of itself it is nothing. It neither ministers to the 
needs of mankind, nor does it satisfy their reason. And 


if, in spite of this, its influence has increased, is increasing, _ 
and as yet shows no sign of diminution, if more and more — 


the educated and the half-educated are acquiescing in its 


pretensions, and, however reluctantly, submitting to its 
domination, this is, at least in part, because they have not 


learned to distinguish between the practical and inevitable 


claims which experience has on their allegiance, and the qi 
speculative but quite illusory title by which the empirical — 
school have endeavoured to associate naturalism and 


science in a kind of joint supremacy over the thoughts and 
consciences of mankind” (A. J. Balfour, Youndations of 
Belief, pp. 135, 136). . 

_ “The differences between naturalism and theology are, 
no doubt, irreconcilable, since naturalism is by definition 


the negation of all theology. But science must not be- 


dragged into every one of the many quarrels which 


naturalism has taken upon its shoulders. Science is in no- 


way concerned, for instance, to deny the reality of a world | 
unrevealed to us in sense-perception, nor the existence of — 


eli eB ta ty 


sith 5 fans crams ees al RN war SSE 


[ 
le CONFESSION OF FAITH OF A MAN OF SCIENCE 123 
| i 


a God who, however imperfectly, may be known by those 
who diligently seek Him. All it says, or ought to say, is 
that these are matters beyond its jurisdiction ; to be tried, 
therefore, in other courts, and before judges administering 
different laws” (bid. p. 293), 


Note XI. (page 26). THe Conresston or Farrn or 
A MAN oF SCIENCE. 


Professor Ernst Haeckel’s Monism, of which a transla- 
tion has been recently published (London: A. & C. Black), 
is interesting as an indication of the conceptions, specu- 
lative and religious, which, on the authority of one of 
the foremost representatives of modern evolutionary 
science, are alone compatible with its deliverances. The 
work consists of an address, originally delivered extem- 
poraneously at Altenburg on the 9th of October 1892, 
and afterwards revised and enlarged. Its full title is 
Monism, as connecting Religion and Science : The Confession 
of Faith of a Man of Science. It contains the outcome of 
thirty years of thought upon the problems of the philosophy 
of nature. 

We must first give a brief outline of the argument pur- 
sued. By Monism ‘‘we unambiguously express our 
conviction that there lives ‘one spirit in all things,’ and 
that the whole cognisable world is constituted, and has 
| ae ‘been developed, in accordance with one common funda- 
! mental law.” This involves the “essential unity of 
inorganic and organic nature,” and abolishes the distinc- 

tion between “the natural and the spiritual,”—“ the latter 
is only a part of the former (or vice versd) ; both are one.” 
) Monism is not, indeed, natural to man, whose earliest 
tendency is to ascribe phenomena to personal beings, a 
tendency which survives in the teleological view of the 


124 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


world, as the work of a creator working according to plan. — 
Upon this basis arise the various dualistic or polytheistic | 
systems which gradually give place to Monism. God is — 
no longer placed “over against the material world as an 
external being, but must be placed as ‘a divine power’ or 
‘moving spirit’ within the cosmos itself. . . . Even the 
human soul is but an insignificant part of the all-embrac- 
ing ‘world-soul’; just as the human body is only a small 
individual fraction of the great organised physical world.” 
The unification of nature has been furthered by the 
conceptions of ‘‘ conservation of energy ” and “ conservation 
of matter,” which Haeckel proposes to combine as the law 
of the conservation of substance. All phenomena with-- 
out exception are to be carried back to the mechanism of 
the atom, the relation of which, however, to the ‘“ general 
space-filling universal ether ‘‘ is as yet an unsolved problem. 
Probably the ether-atoms repel each other while the 
ponderable mass-atoms attract each other, and thus the 
starting-point for the evolution of the universe is gained : 
—‘ Religion itself, in its reasonable forms, can take over 
the ether theory as an article of faith, bringing into con- 
tradistinction the mobile cosmic ether as creating divinity, 
and thé inert heavy mass as material of creation.” The 
atoms of our chemical elements arise from “the grouping 
together in definite numbers of the primitive atoms or 
atoms of mass”; the earth is thrown off from the whirl- 
ing nebular mass; it cools, water appears, organic life 
becomes possible. Through successive stages life advances 
up to man, whose consciousness is a “ neurological problem,” 
a special case of the “‘ question of substance. If we under- 
stood the nature of matter and energy, we should also 
understand how the substance underlying them can under 
certain conditions feel, desire, and think.” Monism does not 
deny Immortality, which in a scientific sense is “ conserva- 
tion of substance ”—‘“‘ the cosmos as a whole is immortal,” — 


CONFESSION OF FAITH OF A MAN OF SCIENCE 125 


personal immortality only is unthinkable. All miracles 
and revelations being set aside, we have “as the precious 
and priceless kernel of true religion, the purified ethic 
that rests on rational anthropology.” The monistic idea 
of God recognises the divine spirit in all things; and it 
is not without its Trinity: ‘The True, the Beautiful, and 
the Good,—these are the three august Divine Ones before 
which we bow the knee in adoration: in the unforced 
combination and mutual supplementing of these we gain 
the pure idea of God. To this ‘triune’ Divine Ideal 
shall the coming twentieth century build its altars.” 

The scheme thus outlined deserves a closer considera- 

tion than can at present be given to it. A few remarks 
in criticism are all that can be attempted. 
LL. It gives us pleasure to acknowledge the earnest 
spirit which pervades this, as well as many other recent 
utterances from the same side. It seems to us emphatically 
that of one feeling his way to the highest truth, feeling, 
we may say reverently, after God. Even when we believe 
there is misrepresentation, we are convinced that it is due 
to misunderstanding, not to a love of carping objection. 

2. It is at the same time gratifying to feel how much 
there is in common between the Scientific and the Theistic 
: or Christian view of the world. The unity of natural law, 


so far as Science is able to establish it, is as essential to 


Monotheism as to Pantheism or Monism, and we have 
only to read carefully this address of Haeckel’s to see that 
the gaps which science leaves have to be filled up by 
- speculation and faith as much on the one view as on the 
other. It may be that so far as our reading of external 
‘nature is concerned, either theory may be as possible as 
the other ; but we claim that a full and impartial considera- 
tion of human nature, experience, and history reveals the 
difference between them and makes the Pantheistic view 


a Inadequate and untenable. 


126 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


3. The theory of Monism as an intelligible explana- 4 


tion of the universe breaks down upon the simple fact 
that the universe, as it presents itself to our experience, 
is not a monotony, but is infinitely diversified. Many 
a theory which appears logically irrefragable is confuted 
by a solvitur ambulando; it proves too much; it proves 
that what we know as existing never could be at all! 
Now in the universe diversity must be accounted for as 
well as unity ; we may reduce them both to their simplest 
terms, but we must beware of crossing the gulf between 
them by means of a phrase or a metaphor. In 
Haeckel’s monistic system we have a curious series of 


contrasts or correlatives. We have ‘conservation of — 


energy” balanced by ‘conservation of matter”; to 
combine them under the conception of ‘ conservation 
of substance” is an assumption which explains nothing, 
which does not leave their opposition less complete 
or their necessity less absolute. The conception of 
“animated atoms,” to which Haeckel makes a passing 
reference accompanied by a somewhat hesitating approval, 


does. not appear to help us much. Even as worked out 


by the late Professor Clifford under the name of “ mind- 
stuff,”-it is attended by two insuperable difficulties,— 
first, the inconceivability of the alleged fact itself; and 


secondly, the unresolved question of the power or 


influence under the guidance of which the “animated 
atoms” range themselves into the forms of the actual 
universe. Is that power autocratic or republican; do 
the atoms act under necessity or, as it were, after 
conference? Spinoza’s conception of Substance, as on 
the one side Extension, on the other Thought, is not 
made more acceptable by this indefinite dividing up of 
substance. Mind as one and a whole can be thought 
of as effecting that which an infinity of “atomic” minds 
could not effect without a co-ordinating power, a mind in 


CONFESSION OF FAITH OF A MAN OF SCIENCE 127 


the whole as well as in the several parts. Again, we have 
the confessedly insoluble relationship of the ether-atoms 
and the mass-atoms. A suggestion is made as to the 
mode in which the one may have sprung from the 
other, but their fundamental properties are represented 
as entirely opposite,—an unlikeness which is the in- 
dispensable condition of further development. The 
ether is, as we have seen, compared to the “creating 
divinity,” while the mass is the “material of creation.” 
All this would point rather to a system of Dualism or 
Polarity than Monism, and it is curious that a consider- 
able portion of Professor Haeckel’s address is occupied 
with an advocacy of Dualism rather than Monotheism 
as a system of Religion, in so far as the choice lies 
between the two, and with a reproach to Christian theo- 
logians for letting the doctrine of the “devil,” in the 
sense of an Ahriman opposed to Ormuzd, fall into the 
_ background! We may ask whether in view of the opposi- 
tion which seems to run through the physical universe, 
even on Professor Haeckel’s own showing,—an opposition 
which it requires the most speculative and questionable 
assumption to overcome,—Dualism is not really the 
most probable theory of the world, or if not Dualism, 
' whether Monotheism has not at least as much to say 
for itself as Monism. In our earliest lessons in Greek 
philosophy we are taught how Thales and Anaximander 
attempted vainly to construct Monistic systems, and 
how it was like a ray of light when Anaxagoras pointed 
to Mind as the necessary hypothesis to account for the 
ordering and arrangement of the physical elements. 
_ The same process has been repeated many times since 
in the case both of individual thinkers and schools of 
thought. In his Rede lecture of 1885 the late G. J. 
Romanes adopted a view of “Monism” similar to that 
of Bruno and Haeckel, “according to which mind and 


128 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


motion are co-ordinate and probably coextensive aspects 
of the same universal fact.” A year or two later, in~ 
the essays printed in Thoughts on Religion (Longmans, — 
1895), he is found writing: ‘We are thus driven upon — 
the theory of Theism as furnishing the only nameable 
explanation of this universal order. That is to say, by 
no logical artifice can we escape from the conclusion | 
that, as far as we can see, this universal order must : 
be regarded as due to one integrating principle; and — 
that this, so far as we can see, is most probably of — 
the nature of mind” (pp. 71, 72). The Thoughts on — 
Religion, which are the disjecta membra of a profound : i 
“Candid Examination of Religion,” show how when | | 
once this priority of mind over matter has been 


oe 
Is A te ois eee 


ra cana hs iat 


ehh wee 


eh DE tet 


admitted, in other words, when the equally balanced — : 
Dualism has ended in a decided preponderance being 


allowed to Ormuzd over Ahriman, the mind is compelled a 


to go further, and Monism while having much in 


common with the truth has a side on which it is — 
unsatisfactory. Romanes in the Zhoughts busies himself 
with problems which could have had no meaning or 


interest for him until he had answered in the affirmative 
the question as to the truth of Theism. 


4. There are one or two minor features of Haeckel’s 
Monism to which reference may be made, if only for 


the purpose of illustrating the state of mind which 
renders contentment with such a theory possible. We 


have spoken of his misunderstandings of his opponents’ — \ 


position. The most serious of these is his definition 


of the God of Theism as “a ‘personal being,’ or, in — 


other words, an individual of limited extension in space, 


or even of human form.” In opposition to this view, — 
“to Monism,” he says, “God is everywhere.” Surely the — 
omnipresence of God is an article of the Christian — 
creed! It may be that by the ignorant and uncultured — 


| ‘CONFESSION OF FAITH OF A MAN OF SCIENCE 129 


| God is sometimes conceived of as a “magnified and 
non-natural man,” but even then analysis will show 
that elements enter into and cling round the thought 
which help to redeem it from unworthiness, and certainly 
make inapplicable the reproach that the ‘‘loftiest cosmic 
idea is degraded to that of a ‘gaseous vertebrate.’ ” 
But the thoughtful Christian theologian recognises and 
contends for the immanence as well as the transcendence 
| of Deity ; he recognises that while he claims to know God 
| .in a sense in which the Agnostic denies that knowledge, 
there are aspects of the Divine Being with regard to 
_ which he too must be agnostic, and so far as he conceives 
the Godhead on the analogy of humanity, it is the moral 
and spiritual side of humanity to which he believes that 
_ the Godhead is akin. We may regard even Romanes’ 
definition of Theism, when he says that “the nearest 
' approach which the human mind can make to a true 
~ notion of the ens realissimum is that of an inconceivably 
magnified image of itself at its best,” as in certain respects 
inadequate, but it is far more just than that of Haeckel. 
The Monistic ethic, according to Haeckel, is identical 
__with the purest ethic of Christianity ; it consists in love, 
e and “its natural and highest command ” is “ Do to others 
4 as you would they should do to you.” This law, he claims, 
© is far older than Christianity. ‘In the human family this 
maxim has always been accepted as self-evident; an 
_ ethical instinct, it was an inheritance from our animal 
ancestors. It had already found a place among the 
herds of Apes and other social Mammals; in a similar 
_ manner, but with a wider scope, it was already present 
in the most primitive communities and among the hordes 
of the least advanced savages.” We do not pause to 
criticise this as a history of the origin of our moral 
sentiments, scarcely even to point out the immense in- 
terval between the self-sacrifice enjoined by Christianity 


) 


y 


¢ i 


130 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


and the corporate selfishness though individual devotion — 


which alone the gregarious instinct illustrates. We do 


not stay to argue that this, like many similar theories, | 


in seeking to explain the higher forms of life by reference — : 
to the lower, insinuates that there is nothing in the one — 
but what is implicitly contained in the other. But we — 


nay fairly contrast the line of argument assumed when 


the Monistic ethic has to be vindicated with that employed — 4 


when the goodness of God has to be attacked (p. 73). There 
we see nothing but the “struggle for existence.” ‘We 


now know that the whole of organic nature on our planet — 
exists only by a relentless war of all against all. The 


raging war of interests in human society is only a feeble 


picture of the unceasing and terrible war of existence 
which reigns throughout the whole of the living world.” 


Which, we may ask, is the true school of morality, the | 
conflict of all against all, or the gregarious instinct? And — 


is not a more adequate theory than that of Monism 
necessary to show us which is the higher of the two,—is 
not some higher Power than it makes us acquainted with 


necessary to bring the comparative order of the one out of — H 


the chaos of the other ? 


We have noted how Haeckel deals with the question of © | 


Immortality and how he ‘palters with a double sense,” 
appearing to vindicate the doctrine while repudiating it 
in the only meaning in which it can have any value for 
the human mind. 


In concluding this Note, we simply transcribe the con- _ 


ditions which, according to Haeckel, constitute an “un- — 


prejudiced point of view ” from which the questions of the 


relation of Religion to Science should be discussed. Their 3 


impartiality is obvious! A man of science will hold the 
Monistic faith when he has “(1) Sufficient acquaintance 
with the various departments of natural science, and in 


particular with the modern doctrine of evolution; (2) — 


LIMITATIONS OF SCIENCE 131 


Sufficient acuteness and clearness of judgment to draw by 
induction and deduction, the necessary logical consequences 
that flow from such empirical knowledge; (3) Sufficient 
moral courage to maintain the Monistic knowledge, so 
gained, against the attacks of hostile dualistic and plural- 
istic systems ; and (4) Sufficient strength of mind to free 
himself, by sound, independent reasoning, from dominant 
religious prejudices, and especially from those irrational 
dogmas which have been firmly lodged in our minds from 
earliest youth as indisputable revelations” (p. 60). 


Nore XII. (page 33). Limrrations oF ScrEnce. 


“Nothing, for instance, seems simpler than the idea 
involved in the statement that we are, each of us, situated 
at any given moment in some particular portion of space, 
surrounded by a multitude of material things, which 
are constantly acting upon us and upon each other... 
Yet the purport of the sentence which expresses it is 
clear only till it is examined, is certain only till it is 
questioned ; while almost every word in it suggests, and 
has long suggested, perplexing problems to all who are 
prepared to consider them. What are ‘we’? What is 
- space? Can ‘we’ be in space, or is it only our bodies 
about which any such statement can be made? What is 
a ‘thing’? and, in particular, what is a ‘material thing’? 
What is meant by saying that one ‘material thing’ acts 


; upon ‘another’? What is meant by saying that ‘ material 


things’ act upon ‘us’? Here are six questions all directly 
and obviously arising out of our most familiar acts of judg- 
ment. Yet, direct and obvious as they are, it is hardly 
too much to say that they involve all the leading problems 
of modern philosophy, and that the man who has got an 
answer to them is the fortunate possessor of a tolerably 


complete system of metaphysic” (A. J. Balfour, Younda- 


tions of Belief, pp. 281, 282). 


132 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


Nore XIII. (page 41). Dutsm. 


The Deistic position is essentially the same as that 
taken up by the ancient Epicureans when they spoke of 
the Dez otiose, and declared ‘‘ Deos nihil humana curare.” 4 

“T agree with Pascal! that there is virtually nothing 
to be gained by being a theist, as distinguished from a 
Christian. Unitarianism is only an affair of the reason—_ 
a merely abstract theory of the mind, having nothing to 3 
do with the heart, or the real needs of mankind. It is — 
only when it takes the New Testament, tears out a few of — 
its leaves relating to the divinity of Christ, and ap- | 
propriates all the rest, that its system becomes in any 
degree possible as a basis for personal religion.: 

“Tf there is a Deity it seems to be in some indefinite - % 
degree more probable that He should impart a Revelation | ; 
than that He should not” (Romanes, ROO: on 
feligion, p. 165). 


wee AR 


aie 


Re a er ped tein Som 


ce 


Nore XIV. (page 43). Ruvecation as Epucation. 


Revelation has been said (as by Lessing) to be “The — 
Education of the Human Race.” This is incorrect only if — 
by Education is meant Self-Education. If the Divine | 
Education of the human race were meant,—God leading — 
man onwards to know and appropriate more of himself, — 
to understand more fully the natural manifestation of — 
Himself in the world, to read more clearly the meaning 
of His dealings with the race,—we could scarcely have a 
truer definition. Our experience indeed must supply us 
with the elements which the Divine Education builds up 
into higher forms. But when we consider the actual 


1 Pensées, pp. 91-98. 


; FP agi alge A 


ee 


pce pend 


a 
wetter AT ge ts 


REVELATION AS EDUCATION 133 


structure of human knowledge we are induced to conclude 
that the elements of experience available are not altogether 
inadequate to the transmission of even the highest truth. 
Poetry, with its intense spirituality and beauty,—Morality, 
with its refined views of duty and virtue,—have been im- 
parted and handed down from mind to mind by no other 
means than we may assume to be at the service of Revela- 
tion. It is true that for Revelation to be possible under 
such conditions assumes that the truth to be revealed is 
‘not altogether out of harmony with, or out of relation 
to, the nature and experience of man. Take any one 
of the Divine attributes—Love, for example. By a 
_ process of abstraction and elimination, man may be led to 
form such a conception of Love as may not only be per- 
fectly free from any grosser element, but may rise to 
- include a pure, holy, ideal emotion, yearning after good- 
: “ness and truth, and prompting to the most perfect self- 
i forgetfulness and self-surrender. It follows that the 
‘Divine education of mankind demands time, that it is 
necessarily historical. The higher and purer the conscious- 
| ness, to be formed, the slower is the process of formation. 
_ The mind has to be trained to perceive and assimi- 
- late its elements. What is at first embodied in outward 
forms and sensible representations at length works itself 
into the mind and heart, and becomes inward and spiritual. 
‘But this is a process which can only take place in time, it 
is the result of a historical development. Moral training 
is largely external before it can take root in the inner 
Si nature. The necessity of holiness is taught by the in- 
-culeation of ceremonial purity and separation. The idea 
| pi the spirituality of God is protected by the mystery and 
- awe which attends His worship; the sense of His per- 


we 


eteniat aed 


= 


SSS 


 covenant-making and covenant-keeping with the members 
og a privileged race. The sense of sin is deepened by the 


134 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


requirement of sacrifice. Such illustrations from the 4 
history of religion indicate the mode in which the Divine — 


Thought works itself in and through the life of men, how 
it leads them from the lower to the higher by a wisely |. 


ordered special experience of which specially prepared and . 


constituted souls are able to read, translate, and com- | 
municate the meaning. The same principle is seen at 
work in other departments of human life. From time to | 


time we observe the growth of ideas ina community. — f 
Not infrequently these are instances of deliberately — 
designed education. Some far-seeing statesman perceives _ 


a truth which the great mass of the people utterly fail to 


comprehend, not for want of the necessary elements of the — 


conception, but for want of power to grasp it as a whole. 
In course of time, however, it works itself into their life 


and being, so that it is truly said that the novelties of © 


yesterday become the common-places of to-day. So if we 
compare the significance of many words in the New Testa- 
ment with their usage in Classical Greek, we may at once 
perceive the difference of meaning, the increased fulness of. 


significance which the words there possess. We know — 
that it was the confluence of the streams of Greek and — 


Hebrew thought which thus rendered possible the modi- 


fication of the terms and adapted them to become the — 
vehicle of the Christian revelation. We see, therefore, | 


how Revelation supplies the defects of ordinary knowledge, 
and why in its mode of operation it is gradual, historical, 
and progressive, imperfect rather than false in its first 


representations, while ever advancing towards the com- 


munication of clearer light and more perfect knowledge. 


Romanes remarks that if there are reasons (e.g. our 


state of probation) why revelation should not be de- 
monstrative, we can well see why revelation should be 
the gradual unfolding of a plan. “For Ist, gradual 
evolution is in analogy with God’s other work. 2nd, It 


ea MIRACLES AND CHRISTIANITY 135 


i does not leave Him without witness at any time during 
the historical period. 3rd, It gives ample scope for per- 
severing research at all times—z.e. a moral test, and not 
‘merely an intellectual assent to some one (ea hypothes?) 

unequivocally attested event in history” (Thoughts on 
Religion, p. 171). 

“Tf revelation has been of a progressive character, 
then it follows that it must have been so, not only 
historically, but likewise intellectually, morally, and 
spiritually. For thus only could it be always adapted 

to the advancing conditions of the human race” (cbid. 

ep. 172). 

P “The mere fact of it being so largely incorporated 

with secular history renders the Christian religion unique ; 
so to speak, the world, throughout its entire historical 

period, has been constituted the canvas on which this 

__ Divine revelation has been painted—and painted so 

gradually that not until the process had been going on 

for a couple of thousand years was it possible to perceive 

the subject thereof” (zbid. p. 173). 


Note XV. (page 49). MuiracLes AND CHRISTIANITY. 


> “Tf miracles,” said Baden Powell, “were in the 
estimation of a former age among the chief supports of 
Christianity, they are at present among the main diffi- 
culties and hindrances to its acceptance.” “It is difficult 

to understand,” justly replied Dean Mansel, “on what 
ground it can be maintained that the miracles are a 

hindrance to the belief in Christianity, except on a ground 
which asserts also that there is no distinctive Christianity 
in which to believe.” 


136 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


Nore XVI. (page 50). ‘Havine no Hops.’ 


Mr. Romanes wrote in the conclusion of his Candid | 
Examination of Theism -—So far as the ruination of in- | 


dividual happiness is concerned, no one can have a more 


lively perception than myself of the possibly disastrous — | 
tendency of my work. So far as I am individually — 
concerned, the result of this analysis has been to show 
that, whether I regard the problem of Theism on the At 
lower plane of strictly relative probability, or on the at 


higher plane of purely formal considerations, it equally 
becomes my obvious duty to stifle all belief of the kind 
which I conceive to be the noblest, and to discipline my 
intellect with regard to this matter into an attitude of the 


purest scepticism. And forasmuch as I am far from being | 


able to agree with those who affirm that the twilight 
doctrine of the ‘new faith’ is a desirable substitute for 
the waning splendour of ‘the old, I am not ashamed to 
confess that with this virtual negation of God the universe 
to me has lost its soul of loveliness: and although from 
henceforth the precept to ‘work while it is day’ will 
doubtless but gain an intensified force from the terribly 
intensified meaning of the words that ‘the night cometh 


when no man can work,’ yet when at times I think, as at ~ 


times I must, of the appalling contrast between the 
hallowed glory of that creed which once was mine, and the 


lonely mystery of existence as now I find it,—at such 
times I shall ever feel it impossible to avoid the sharpest 


=i 


ie 
~ 


pang of which my nature is susceptible. For whether it — 


be due to my intelligence not being sufficiently advanced 
to meet the requirements of the age, or whether it be 
due to the memory of those sacred associations which 
to me at least were the sweetest that life has given, I can- 
not but feel that for me, and for others who think as I 


EN: oe os 


ee AND MIRACLES 137 


ss do, there is a dreadful truth in those words of Hamilton,— 
Philosophy having become a meditation, not merely of 
death, but of annihilation, the precept know thyself has 
become transformed into the terrific oracle to Gdipus,— 


‘Mayest thou ne’er know the truth of what thou art’” 


Reprinted in Thoughts on Religion, pp. 27, 28). 

~ We cannot wonder that one who parted with his belief 
80. sadly should in later days have returned so far to it, 
and that in the fragments recently edited by Canon Gore 
we should, in that editor’s words, see “‘a mind, both able 
and ORY sincere, feeling after God and finding 
Him.” 


Nore XVII. (page 54). Ravionanism anp Mrracues. 
Peet 

Bi ‘Are we to say that the results of the rationalising 
te temper are the works of reason? Surely not. The 
rationalist rejects miracles; and if you force him to a 
SC . he may no doubt produce from the ample 
stores of past controversy plenty of argument in support 
of his belief. But do not therefore assume that his 
belief is the result of his argument. The odds are 
aS strongly in favour of argument and belief, having both 
grown up under the fostering influence of his ‘psycho- 
logical elimate’” (A. J. Balfour, Foundations of Belvef, 
p. 210). 


the ordinary mode of interpreting sense-perception’ has 
been perfectly consistent with so-called ‘supernatural ’ 
P nenomena. It may become so again. And if during 


138 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


naturalistic theory of the world to which it has been _ 


steadily gravitating” (ebed. p. 171). 


Note XVIII. (page 55). Parasitic Moratiry. 


“ Biologists tell us of parasites which live, and can 


only live, within the bodies of animals more highly 


organised than they. For them their luckless host has | 
to find food, to digest it, and to convert it into nourish- 4 
ment which they can consume without exertion, and 


assimilate without difficulty. Their structure is of the 


simplest kind. Their host sees for them, so they need — | 


no eyes; he hears for them, so they need no ears; he 
works for them and contrives for them, so they need but 


feeble muscles and an undeveloped nervous system. But 


are we to conclude from this that for the animal kingdom 
eyes and ears, powerful limbs and complex nerves, are 
superfluities? They are superfluities for the parasite 


only because they have first been necessities for the host, — 
and when the host perishes, the parasite, in their absence, f 


is not unlikely to perish also. 


‘So it is with those persons who claim to show by their 
example that naturalism is practically consistent with the — 
maintenance of ethical ideals with which naturalism has — 
no natural affinity. Their spiritual life is parasitic; it is © 
sheltered by convictions which belong, not to them, but 
to the society of which they form a part; it is nourished | 

by processes in which they take no share. And when 
those convictions decay, and those processes come to an ~ 
‘end, the alien life which they have maintained can scarce 


be expected to outlast them” (A. J. Balfour, Youndations 
of Belref, pp. 82, 83). 


_ OHARACTER AND TEACHING OF CHRIST 139 


el Nore XIX. (page 59). 
_ Tasrimontes TO THE CHARACTER AND TEACHING OF 
Me CHRIST. 


A few additional testimonies may be given from the 
Sermon referred to in the text and other sources. Such 
quotations become the common-places of Apologetic 
literature, but are none the less valuable and significant. 

- Marrnew Arnoip.—“ Try all the ways of righteous- 
ness you can think of, and you will find that no way 
brings you to it, except the way of Jesus, but that this 
we ray does bring you to it.” 

_ AutHor or “ Ecce Homo.”—“ The story of his life will 
a always remain the one record in which the moral per- 
‘fection of man stands revealed in its root and unity, the 
hidden spring made palpably manifest by which the whole 
machine i is moved. And asin the will of God this unique 
man was elected to a unique sorrow, and holds as un- 
di pated a sovereignty in suffering as in self-devotion, all 
lesser examples and lives will for ever hold a subordinate 
place, and serve chiefly to reflect light on the central and 
original example.” 

 Rewan.—“In Jesus was condensed all that is good and 
elevated moun nature... God, is. in- him. . He: feels 
himself with God, and he eas from his own heart what 
he tells us of his Father. He lives in the bosom of God 
by the intercommunion of every moment.” Again (with 
reference to the teaching of Jesus),—“ A kind of splendour 
4 once mild and terrible, a divine force, if I may so speak, 
invests those utterances, detaches them from the context, 
and renders them easy of recognition to the critic. The 
real words of Jesus make themselves known, so to say, by 
their own act. The moment you touch them, you feel 
them vibrate.” 


140 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


Srrauss, to whom, says Farrar (Witness of History to | 


Christ, p. 80, note), Jesus was but “a wise Galilean 


Rabbi.”—Jesus is “the highest object we can possibly 


imagine with respect to religion, the Being without whose 
presence in the mind perfect piety is impossible.” 
CoNGREVE (one of the leaders of English Comtists).— 


“The more thoroughly you mould yourselves into his | 
image, the more keen will be your sympathy and admira- | 


tion’? 


JoHN Stuart Miu (in addition to the words quoted in ! 
the text) says: ‘About the life and sayings of Jesus _ 


there is a stamp of personal originality combined with 
profundity of insight, which, if we abandon the idle 


expectation of finding scientific precision where something | 


very different was aimed at, must place the Prophet of 


Nazareth, even in the estimation of those who have no | 


belief in his inspiration, in the very first rank of the men 
of sublime genius of whom our species can boast. When 
this pre-eminent genius is combined with the qualities of 


probably the greatest moral reformer and martyr to that | 


mission who ever existed upon earth, religion cannot be 
said to have made a bad choice in pitching on this man as 


the ideal representative and guide of humanity; nor, even | 
now, would it be easy, even for an unbeliever, to find a 
better translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract — 


into the concrete, than to endeavour so to live that Chrisaa 
would approve our life.” 


Romanes justly remarks,—‘‘ Those in whom the religious P 
sentiment is intact, but who have rejected Christianity on 


intellectual grounds, still almost deify Christ. ... If we 


estimate the greatness of aman by the influence which he — 
has exerted on mankind, there can be no question, even 


from the secular point of view, that Christ is much the 
greatest man who has ever lived” (Thoughts on Religion, 
p. 159). 


‘oi erie 
ie 
(oi 


\ 
aa ae 


is THE GOSPEL PORTRAIT AN INVENTION? 141 


NorE XX. (page 63), 
} Is THE GospEL PorTRAIT AN INVENTION ? 


Rousseau had already laid his finger upon the same 
important element of the problem, the impossibility of 
muenting the character of Christ,—‘ Should we suppose 
the > Gospel was a story, invented to please? It is not in 
this manner that we forge tales... . Never did the 
Jewish authors discover such language or morality ; and 
the Gospel has such striking marks of truth, and is so 
rfectly inimitable, that the invention of it would be 
nore astonishing than the hero of it.” 


Nore XXI. (page 69), 
BavuR AND HARNACK ON THE RESURRECTION. 


Baur’ S position may be illustrated by a further quota- 
tion from the same work.—The view we take of the 
ie tesurrection, ” he says, “is of minor importance for the 
h istory. We may regard it as an outward objective 
miracle, or as a subjective psychological miracle; since, 
though we assume that an inward spiritual process was 
eee by which the unbelief of the disciples at the time 
' the death of Jesus was changed into belief in his resur- 
Bion, still no psychological analogy can show what that 
cess was. In any case it is only through the con- 
sciousness of the disciples that we have any knowledge of 
that which was the object of their faith; and thus we 
cannot go further than to say that by sahaleven means this 
ult was brought about, the resurrection of Jesus 
ame a fact to their BOReosu ees and ‘Was as real to 


142 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


Harnack, touching upon the same point, the place of 
the resurrection of Christ in the faith of the first disciples, 
says: ‘This permanent importance as the Lord, he 


(Jesus) secured not by disclosures about the mystery of | 
his Person, but by the impression of his life, and the 
interpretation of his death. He interprets it, like all his | 


sufferings, as a victory, as the passing over to his glory, 
and in spite of the cry of God-forsakenness upon the cross, 


he has proved himself able to awaken in his followers the | 
real conviction that he lives and is Lord and Judge of the | 
living and the dead” (History of Dogma, Eng. trans., vol. 


i. p. 60). His note on the belief in the resurrection of 
Christ (zbed. pp. 85-87) is a curious struggle to get the 


benefit of the belief without admission of the fact. We 


may admit that “religious belief, that is, trust in God,” 
is necessary to an intelligent acceptance of the testimony 


to the fact, and also that “the question generally as to 


whether Jesus has risen, can have no existence for any 


one who looks at it apart from the contents and worth of | 
the Person of Jesus.” We may admit that probably “no ~ 
appearances of the Lord could permanently have convinced — 


them (his disciples) of his life, if they had not possessed 


in their hearts the impression of his Person.” But we — 
cannot admit that the “fact that friends and adherents of 
Jesus were convinced that they had seen him, especially — 
when they themselves explain that he appeared to them in 
heavenly glory, gives, to those who are in earnest about 
fixing historical facts, not the least cause for the assumption — 
that Jesus did not continue in the grave.” This conviction, 4 
Harnack says, “of having seen the Lord was no doubt of 
the greatest importance for the disciples and made them 


Evangelists ; but what they saw cannot at first help us.” 


Yet the Christian of to-day ‘believes in a future life for 
himself with God because he believes that Christ lives. _ 
That is the peculiarity and paradox of Christian faith, 


aS G 
DISCREPANCIES IN NARRATIVE OF RESURRECTION 143 


a . It is Christian to pray that God would give the 
Spirit to make us strong to overcome the feelings and the 
doubts of nature, and create belief in an eternal life 
through the experience of ‘dying to live.’ When this 
aith, obtained in this way, exists, it has always been 
‘supported by the conviction that the Man lives who 
brought life and immortality to light.” But on what, we 

may ask, does this mighty conviction rest? Why should 
“the Man” live rather than others if he continued in the 
grave? Would the impression made by His Person have 
produced the conviction in the disciples without the 
appearances which “made them Evangelists”? And as 
for the “form in which Jesus lives,” is there no alternative 
between the “simple reanimation of his mortal body” 

and that purely ideal and spiritual existence, in which 
alone Harnack seems to see the significance of the resur- 
A rection story, for which no evidence can be offered except 
the impression produced by His Person, and which is 
made to bear the weight of the whole subsequent develop- 
ment! Surely if there is a ‘‘natural body,” there is also 
a a “spiritual body.” 


Notre XXII. (page 70). 
DISCREPANCIES IN THE NARRATIVE OF THE 
RESURRECTION, 


MM. Hutton, in his paper upon “Christian Evidences, 
| Bopalae and Critical,” admits that “none of the extant 

oo agree closely either with each other, or with St. 
Paul’s summary of the facts.” ‘I think,” he adds, “that 
every candid person will admit that this condition of the 
re external evidence is not of the kind which any one would 
wish for the purpose of establishing by direct testimony a 


very marvellous and unprecedented event.” But when we- 
a 


144 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


examine Keim’s statement of the contradictions he finds 


in the narrative, many vanish as altogether unimportant, | 


and many it is clear could only be considered contra- 
dictory if each of the accounts was manifestly intended to 


be exhaustive; the statements are not really incompat-_ 


ible. And though of many points we are unable to tell 


from the narratives how they fitted into each other and | 


formed part of the same series of events, it has not, as 


pointed out in the text, been found impossible to show | 
how they may have happened, the contradiction being | 
thus found to be, after all, only apparent. Keim himself, | 


while claiming that the details of the resurrection-story 


“swarm with contradiction and myth,” declares that the i 
event itself “is one of the best-attested incidents of the | 


New Testament.” 


Note XXIII. (page 78). 
ELEVATION AND ATTRACTIVENESS OF THE 
CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 


‘“‘Ttis on all sides worth considering that the revolution ‘4 


effected by Christianity in human life is immeasurable 
and unparalleled by any other movement in history. .. . 


Not only is Christianity immeasurably in advance of all — 
other religions. It is no less so of every other system of — 
thought that has ever been promulgated in regard to all — 


that is moral and spiritual. Whether it be true or false, . 


it is certain that neither philosophy, science, nor poetry has — 


ever produced results in thought, conduct, or beauty in any 


degree to be compared with it. This, I think, will be on — 


all hands allowed as regards conduct. As regards thought 


and beauty it may be disputed. But, consider, what | 


has all the science or all the philosophy of the world done 


for the thought of mankind to be compared with the one — 


yet 


__ ELEVATION OF THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM 145 


doctrine ‘God is love’? Whether or not true, conceive 
what belief in it has been to thousands of millions of our 
race—ze. its influence on human thought, and thence on 
human conduct. Thus to admit its incomparable in- 
fluence in conduct is indirectly to admit it as regards 
thought. Again, as regards beauty, the man who fails to 
see its incomparable excellence in this respect merely 
shows his own deficiency in the appreciation of all that is 
noblest inman. True or not true, the entire story of the 
Cc Cross, from its commencement in prophetic aspiration to 
its” ‘culmination in the Gospel, is by far the most 
magnificent in literature. And surely the fact of its 
having all been lived does not detract from its poetic 
value. Nor does the fact of its being capable of ap- 
propriation by the individual Christian of to-day as still 
a vital religion detract from its sublimity. Only to a 
‘man wholly destitute of spiritual perception can it be that 
Christianity should fail to appear the greatest exhibition 
of the beautiful, the sublime, and of all else that appeals 
to our spiritual nature, which has ever been known upon 
our earth” (Romanes, Thoughts on Religion, pp. 159, 
160). 

“Tt is true that beliefs like this (ec. those involved 
‘in the Christian form of Theism) do not in any narrow 
“sense resolve our doubts nor provide us with explanations. 
But they give us something better than many explana- 
tions. For they minister, or rather the Reality behind 
them ministers, to one of our deepest ethical needs ; 
to a need which, far from showing signs of diminution, 
“seems to grow with the growth of civilisation, and to 
‘touch us even more keenly as the hardness of an earlier 
time dissolves away” (A. J. Balfour, Mowndations of 
Belief, p. 354). 


1Q 


146 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


Nore XXIV. (page 81). Pagan anp Curisttan Erates.— | 


Christian Ethics are inseparably connected with Chris- | 
tian Theology ; we can never infer, beyond a certain limit, | 
the commandments of God from the conditions of life, we | 
must apply the former to the latter. When Pagan Ethics — 
pursued the former course, God was to them either an — 
abstraction, or a Pantheistic unity, from which a Utilitarian | 
or Necessitarian morality inevitably flowed. Christian — 
Ethics assume as their starting-point a living and personal 
God in communion with men, and from this standpoint 
seck to explain and to guide human life. “All moral | 
philosophy, and especially the moral philosophy of Pagan- — 
ism, has first to determine the end of the quest, then the | 
means by which this end may be best secured; and each | 
of these points has to be decided by pure reason. Chris- 
tian morality is synthetic; Pagan morality, as soon as it 
put forward any claim to be philosophical, became at once — 
analytic” (Wilkins, Laght of the World, p. 142). : | 


Note XXV. (page 84). Morat Faiture or BUDDHISM. ~ 


Archdeacon Hardwicke (in Christ and other Masters) — 
thus sums up the practical effect of Buddhism, without — 
doubt the richest of all the Eastern systems in moral 
elements and precepts :—‘“‘ Fair and lovely as might be — 
the outward forms of Buddhism, its inherent principles — 
were such as made it well-nigh powerless in the training 
of society, and therefore it has left the countries which it 
overran the prey of superstition and of demon-worship, of | 
political misrule, and of spiritual lethargy.. Confessing no — 
supreme God, who is at once the Legislator and the — 
Judge, its moral end was ultimately void of all authority. — 


LECKY ON PAGAN ETHICS 147 


Denying also the true dignity and freedom of the human 
agent, it invested moral sentiments and relations with a 
kind of physical outsidedness ; they were all parts of a 
great system with which the panies of the Buddhist, 
why he knew not, were mechanically connected. He spoke 
indeed of ‘laws,’ but these were only common rules of 
2 action, according to which all things are found to happen ; 

v ice had no intrinsic hideousness, and virtue was another 
name for calculating prudence; while love itself was, in 
the creed of Buddhism, little more than animal sympathy, 
or the condolence of one sufferer with his fellow. 
Buddhism also could discourse of ‘duty’; but such duty, 
as it had no object and no standard, was devoid of moral 
motion ; it shrank into a lifeless acquiescence in some stern 
1 necessity, a blind submission to some iron law. The 
Buddhist’s principle of action was ‘I must’; he could not 
say Eought.’” 


Nore XXVI. (page 86). Lxecxy on Pacan Erutcs. 


. The whole paragraph, of which the words quoted form 
the conclusion, is deserving of attention as a clear state- 
ment of the contrast between Paganism and Christianity 
in their respective bearing upon poray. “The Ethics 
of Paganism,” Mr. Lecky remarks, “were part of a 
philosophy.. The Ethics of Christianity were part of a 
‘ eligion. The first were the speculations of a few highly 
; e ed individuals, and neither had nor could have had 
any direct influence upon the masses of mankind. The 
second were indissolubly connected with the worship, hopes, 
. and fears of a vast religious system that acts at least as 
powerfully on the most ignorant as on the most educated. 
... Tomake men virtuous was (in the pagan idea) no 
Bore the function of the priest than of the physician. 
On the other hand; the philosophical expositions of duty- 


148 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


were wholly unconnected with the religious ceremonies of 
the temple. To amalgamate these two spheres, to 
incorporate moral culture with religion, and thus to enlist 
in its behalf that desire to enter, by means of ceremonial 
observances, Into direct communication with Heaven, 
which experience has shown to be one of the most 
universal and powerful passions of mankind, was among 
the most important achievements of Christianity. Some- 
thing, no doubt, had been already attempted in this 
direction. . . . But it was the distinguishing characteristic 
of Christianity that its moral influence was not indirect, 
casual, remote, or spasmodic. Unlike all pagan religions, 
ete.” 


Nort XXVIII. (page 92). 
CHRISTIANITY AND THE RELATIONS OF THE SEXES. 


“No dispassionate student of history can doubt that 
the Christian Ethic has resulted in the formation of a new 
type of character and conduct which may be literally 
described as ‘a new heaven and a new earth.’ Perhaps 
supreme amongst its results has been its influence in 


refining and ennobling the relations of the sexes. The 


ideals of manhood and womanhood, their mutual relations, 
—each one developing the other, and bringing out all that 
is noblest and best in it, each being nevertheless distinct 
from the other,—‘ For woman is not undeveloped man, 


but diverse,’-—these things were never taught in the | 
same way by any antecedent system. The Christian ~ 
‘virtues of constancy, patience, tenderness, and devotion | 


between the sexes have given rise to altogether new 


phases of character,—the trust of the child, the devotion — 


of the mother, the self-sacrifice of the sister for the 


brother, the toil of the father for the son, and of the | 
son at times for his parents. All this has been the © 


product of a new process of evolution within the Christian 


Angel but it was not evolved out of the antecedent 
Ethic of the world” (Knight, The Christian Ethic, Preface, 
Dp. xii. xiti.) 


Note XXVIII. (page 107). 
PERSONAL ASSURANCE OF RELIGIoUS TRUTH. 


Religion is no doubt differentiated from many other 
subjects which, like it, depend upon the evidences forth- 
coming with regard to them, by the fact that it touches 
on regions of thought and existence on which a certain 
amount of obscurity necessarily rests. Its aspirations 
go. forth towards the Infinite, it recognises that its 
being is rooted in the Infinite. It is not with existence 
in space and time merely that it has to do; it derives 
‘much of its power from a recognition ae the finite 
cannot exhaust or satisfy man’s spiritual nature, that if 
there be nothing beyond the finite, some of the highest 
a and finest developments of man’s nature must wither and 
disappear. The inner experiences also to which religion 
ap peals belong to the secret manifestations of the soul’s life, 
wl ich cannot be exhibited or analysed, and yet contribute 
no inconsiderable portion of the assurance with which 
religious truth is held. In this light the conclusion of 
the great empirical thinker who sees the universe of the 
actual everywhere shading off into the unknowable, which 
must be postulated, but of which we can only be certain 
that it is, and that it is the fountain of force, is of special 
; interest and suggestiveness. Though the object of its 
faith is not regarded as unknowable, or even as in many 
sesyet unknown, Christianity yet admits the inadequacy 
f its knowledge and the difficulty which the element of 
ini introduces into its reasonings. Only as Mr. 

Spencer found himself impelled to postulate something 
besides phenomena, Christianity sets store by the tend-_ 


150 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


encies and trend of things as throwing light upon much 
as to which direct experience cannot be obtained or | 
expected. | 
One of the most influential factors in the production of — 
this personal assurance is the relation of Faith to Action, — 
the way in which Faith is necessary to experience, and is | 
confirmed and justified by it. ‘“‘ Faith or assurance, which, | 
if not in excess of reason, is at least independent of it, seems | 
to be a necessity in every great department of knowledge | 
which touches on action ; and what great department is 
there which does not? The analysis of sense-experience _ 
teaches us that we require it in our ordinary dealings with | 
the material world. The most cursory examination into | 
the springs of moral action shows that it is an indispen- | 
sable supplement to ethical speculation. Theologians are 
for the most part agreed that without it religion is but the | 
ineffectual profession of a barren creed” (A. J. Balfour, 
Foundations of Belief, pp. 240, 241). | 
Another factor consists in the happiness or peace pro- 
duced by Faith. ‘Compare the ‘secret of Jesus ”—a | 
phrase made familiar to us by Mr. Matthew Arnold. | 
“Consider the happiness of religious—and chiefly of the 
highest religious, ¢.e. Christian—belief. It is a matter of | 
fact that besides being most intense, it is most enduring, | 
growing, and never staled by custom. In short, according _ 
to the universal testimony of those who have it, it differs _ 
from all other happiness not only in degree, but in kind. 
Those who have it can usually testify to what they used to 
be without it. It has no relation to intellectual status. 
It is a thing by itself and supreme” (Romanes, Zhoughts | 
on Leligion, p. 152). | 


BOOKS BOO aos a LE 


_ Among books embracing a at similar range of topics to 


me Ea. P. Fisher, py aa iH Theistic and Christian 
Belief. Hodder and Stoughton ‘ : 5 108.,6d: 


TT. Vincent Tymms, Mystery of God. Elliot Stock . 7s. 6d. 
BR. A. Redford, Christian's Plea against Modern 


_ ___Unbelief. Hodder and Stoughton . . . 7s. 6d. 
1. Christlieb, Modern Doubt and Christian eek 
4 eT Clark 4 i . 10s. 6d. 
_ C. E. Luthardt, Fundamental Truths of Christiana. 
* Meee ta, . Clark. \. ; ” : aL On: 
Pekicx. Mair, Studies in the cen Evidences. 
. Third Edition. T. & T. Clark . , ; « WOSe 
; mJ. Agar Beet, Credentials of the es nel 
Y Methodist Bookroom ; ase O05 
J. Kennedy, Popular Handbook 2 Christin Evi- 
dences. Sunday School Union. . 5 OS. Oe 
- (04 A. Row, Manual of Christian Evidences. aiter 
and Stoughton . : : : pe a8e 6d: 


Also ‘the Volumes of Lectures delivered under the auspices of the 
_ Christian Evidence Society, and published by Hodder and 
~ Stoughton, viz.— 
oe Modern Scepticism. 28. 6d. ' 

| Faith and Free Thought. 28. 
Popular Objections to Revealed Truth. 1s. 8d. 
ee for the Faath. 1s. 6d. 

- Credentials of Christianity. 1s. 6d. 


7 Drtiious Tract Society. Vols. I.-XII. 25; 6d. each. 


oe 


152 HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


The following references and additional notes, arranged in order 
of the chapters of this Handbook, may be found useful, and will 
show how far the scope of the above-named works is coincident 
with that of the Manual. 


InTROD.—Consult any History of Apologetics, such as that in 
Shedd’s History of Doctrines, vol. i., or Redford, part i. 
Also Kennedy, part i. chap. i.; Mair, ii.; Bruce, 
Apologetics, Introd. 


CuHap. I.—On Religion, see Kennedy, part i. chap iii. ; Luthardt, vi. 

Also Liddon, Some Elements of Religion, i. ; Fairbairn, 
City of God, part i. section ii. ; Newman Smyth, Zhe 
Religious Keeling. Carpenter, Permanent Hlements o7 
Religion. 
On Theism, Tymms, iii.; Fisher, ii. ; Luthardt, iii. ; 
Kennedy, part i. chap. iv.; Redford, part ii. Also 
Liddon, Some Elements of Religion, ii.; Flint, Theism ; 
Row, Christian Theism,; Davidson, Theism and Human 
Nature ; Cazenove, Historic Aspects of the a priori Argu- 
ment ; Orr, Christian View of God and the World, iii. 


Cuap. If.—Part I.—On Antitheistic Theories generally, see Fisher, 
iii. ; Kennedy, part i. chap. ii. ; Christlieb, iii.; Redford, 
part i, Also Flint, Antithetstic Theories; Fairbairn, 
City of God, part i. section i. ; Hutton, Theological Essays, 
i.-iv. ; Bruce, Apologetics, book 1. 


On Materialism, Tymmazs, i. 

On Pantheism, Tymms, ii. 
On Agnosticism, Beet, note iii. Also Iverach, Zs God 
knowable ? 


Cuap. Il.—Part II.-—Fisher, xix. ; Mair, i. ; Fairbairn, ‘‘ Theism and 
Scientific Speculation,” in Studies in the Philosophy of 
Religion, etc.; Kennedy, Natural Theology and Modern 
Thought; Le Conte, Evolution and its Relation to Religious 
Thought ; Romanes, Thoughts on Religion. 


Caap. III.—Tymms, iv.-vi. ; Kennedy, part i. chap. vii. ; Mair, iii. ; 
Redford, part ili. ; Luthardt, vii. viii. Also Fisher, 
Nature and Method of Revelation ; Bruce, The Chief End 
of Revelation ; Hutton, Theological Essays, v. 


CHap. IV.—Fisher, iv. vi. x..; Mair, viii. : Row, part ii. ; . Redford, 
part iii. chap. v. Also Tulloch, The Christ of the Gospels 
and the Christ of Modern Criticism (a reply to Renan) ; 
Godet, Defence of the Christian Faith, iii. iv. 


BOOKS RECOMMENDED 153 


Cuap. V.—Fisher, v. ; Tymms, viii. ; Mair, vii. ; Row, chaps. iii. iv. ; 
Kennedy, part ii. chap. iii. ; Redford, part iii. chap. iv. ; 
Beet, v. Also Fairbairn, City of God, part iii. section il. ; 
Godet, Defence of the Christian Faith, v. vi. ; Ullmann, 
Sinlessness of Jesus; Schaff, Person of Christ ; Bushnell, 
Nature and the Supernatural, chap. x. 


Cuap. VI.—Tymmas, ix. ; Row, x. ; Kennedy, part ii. chap. vi. ; Mair, 
‘ix. ; Christlieb, vii. ; Bruce, Apologetics, book iii. chap. iv. 
Dr. Kennedy has a separate work upon The Resurrection of 
Jesus Christ. See also Hutton, Theological Essays, vi., 
Godet, Defence of the Christian Faith, i. ii., and Milligan, 
The Resurrection of our Lord. 


CHAP, VII.—Fisher, xiii. xiv.; Tymms, x. ; Row, v. ; Kennedy, 
part ii. chap. vii. For an excellent discussion of, the 
relation of Christian to Pagan Ethics, see Wilkins, Light oy 
the World. Consult also works on Christian Ethics, such 
as those of Martensen, Wuttke, Dorner, Newman Smyth ; 
and on the History of Christian Ethics, such as Luthardt, 
vol. i. (recently translated), or Sidgwick’s Outlines of the 
History of Ethics, chap, iii. 


Cuap. VIII.—Fisher, xv. ; Row, i.-iii. ; Kennedy, part ii. chap vii. ; 
Brace’s Gesta Christi contains a large amount of informa- 
tion from which, as well as from Lecky’s History of 
European Morals, the statements in the text are mostly 
drawn. Consult also Uhlhorn, Christian Charity in the 
Ancient Church. 


Cuap. IX.—The lecture (xi.) by Dr. Mair on this subject is one of his 
best. Some use has also been made of the lecture in 
Faith and Free Thought, and of that of Canon Cook in 
the Modern Scepticism series. 


_ ACHIEVEMENTS of 
7 87, 88-90 

_ Agnosticism, 19, 21, 114 

_ Anaxagoras, 127 

_ Apologetics, Apology, 1, 3, 111 

_ Apologetics, history of, 113 

_ Apparent death, theory of, 71 
Aristotle, 28, 82, 83 

Arnold, Matthew, 139, 150 

_ Art and Christianity, 97 
Authorities in science and _ re- 
fe ligion, 24, 35, 36 


Christianity, 


Bacon, Vovwm Organum, 115 

~ Baconian philosophy, 28 

Balfour, A. J., Moundations of 

; Belief, 118, 114, 122, 123, 
Peli37; 138, 145 

Basil, St., 96 

*— Baur, 68, 141 

Be Beet, J. A., 105 

_ Bias or prepossession, 2, 10, 115 

_ Bible, unity of plan and spirit in, 

P' 99 


____ literary problem of, 106 

- Books recommended, 151 
Browning, 65 

Bruce, Chief End of Revelation, 
oo, 43 
Buddha, 85, 104 

_ Buddhism, 14, 146 

Butler, Analogy, 4, 114 


Cause, the great, 12 ) 
_ Charity, spirit of, 88, 95 


a - 


INDEX 


Christ, account of, authentic, 60 


attacks on, 64 
character of, 57, 61, 62 
claims of, 58, 64 
portrait of, original, 57, 141 
resurrection of, see Resurrection 
testimonies to, 58, 139 
Christianity, achievements of, 87, 
88-90 
attacked by Jews and heathen, 
1, 3 
doctrinal principles of, 75 
elevation of, 144 
ethical character of, 75-86 
identity of, 4 
unique character of, 98, 101 
universality of, 81 
and art, 97 
and civilisation, 98, 105 
and evil, physical and moral, 
? 
and relations of the 
148 
Church, existence of, an argument 
for Christianity, 99, 106 
Cicero, 116 
Civilisation and Christianity, 98, 
105 
Clifford, Professor, 126 
Comte, 14 
Conflict between 
religion, 24, 28 
Confucius, 104 
Congreve, 140 
Cook, Canon, 105 


Sexes, 


science and 


156 


Cumulative evidence, 98, 100 
instances of, 103-7 


DaRWIN, 31 

Deism, 4, 27, 38, 41, 182 

Demonstrative evidence unattain- 
able, 2, 9 

Design argument, 12, 17 

Deutsch on the Talmud, 85 

Discrepancies in narrative 
Resurrection, 70, 148 

Doctrines of Christianity, 75, 76 

Dualism, 127 


of 


Eastsr, 66, 70 

Hbrard, 111 

Ecce Homo, 82, 139 

Encyclopedia Britannica, 
120 

Epictetus, 80, 85 

EKpicureanism, 132 

Ethical character of Christianity, 
10509 

Ethics of Monism, 129 

Ethies, Pagan and Christian, 146, 
147 

Evidences, Christian, not demon- 
strative, 2, 9°, 

Evolution, 23, 27 

External evidences, 107 


96, 


FABIOLA and hospitals, 95 

Fact and theory in science, 31 

Fairbairn, Principal A. M., 27 

Faith, 115 

Fetichism, 15 

Fisher, Grounds of Theistic and 
Christian Belief, 28, 35, 36, 
78 ies 

Flint, Professor, 18, 14, 16, 120 


GALILEO, 31 

Genesis, 34 

Gladiatorial games, 94 

God, Christian view of, 77 
existence of, 11 
Haeckel’s representation of, 128 
idea of, 15 
knowledge of, 38 
and miracles, 51 


HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


Goethe, 61, 117 
Gore, Canon, 137 


Gospel account of the Resurrec- 2 


tion, 66 
narrative, 57, 61, 62; 141 

Grotius, 114 

Guyau, 119 


Haeckel, Monism, 123 seq. 
Happiness of religion, 150 
Hardwicke, Archdeacon, 146 
Harnack, 142 

Historical evidences, 107 
History of Apologetics, 113 
Homer, 80 


Hospitals and Christianity, 95, 96 > 


Humanity, spirit of, 87, 91 
Hume, 52 
Hutton, R. H., 143 


IDEAL of Christianity, 82 
Inmortality, 50, 124, 130 
Infanticide, 93 

Instinct, religious, 117 
Internal evidences, 107 
Israel, religion of, 15, 120 


JOUFFROY, 118 


Ker, 67, 69, 70, 73, 144 

Kennedy, Natural Theology and 
Modern Thought, 26 

Knight, The Christian Ethic, 149 


LABOUR, dignity of, 95 
Law, natural, 23, 26 
and miracle, 48, 51 
Lecky, History of  Hwropean 
Morals, 82, 85-86, 96, 147- 
48 
History of Rationalism, 54, 55 
Lessing, 132 
Liddon, 14 
Lord’s Supper, 99, 106 


M‘LELLAN, Principal J. B., 71 
Maine, Sir H., 118 


Mair, Studies in the Christian — 
Lwidences, 33, 36, 101, 106, 


107 


4 
7 


seein 


INDEX 


Man, Christian view of, 77 
Mansel, Dean, 135 

Martineau, 14 

Marriage, Pagan and Christian, 
2 Meee 


_ Materialism, 18, 20 


Matheson, Dr. G., 63 
Messianic expectation, 98, 104 
Method of Christian Evidences, 2, 
G7; 8 
Methods of physcial science, 25 
Middle Ages, physics and theology 
of, 28 
Miracles, 46, 48, 135 

Biblical, 48, 55 

crucial examples of, 48, 56 

evidence for, 47, 52 

possibility of, 50 

rejection of, 48 

sentiment against, 47, 54 

and order of nature, 46, 51 
Mill, John Stuart, 15, 41, 59, 63, 

119, 140 
Modern thought, 119 
Mohammedanism, 103 
Monism, 123 seq. 
Monotheism, 103, 125 
Moral argument, 13, 17 
Morality and religion, 55, 75 
Muir, Dr. P. M‘A., Witness of 
Scepticism to Christ, 58 

Miiller, Max, 14, 91, 103, 118 
Mythical theory of the Resurrec- 
tion, 67, 72 


NAPOLEON, 60 

Naturalism, 122, 138 

Newman, F. W., Phases of Faith, 
64 


OBJECTIVE vision theory of the 
Resurrection, 67, 74 

Ontological argument, 12, 17, 120 

Optimism, 102 

Originality of Christ’s character, 
57, 60 


. e Pagan Ethics, 80, 85, 86 


Paley, .Hvidences of Christianity, 
70, dope a LM 


157 


Pammachius, St., 96 
Pantheism, 18, 21, 121, 125 
Parallels between Christianity and 
other systems, 76 
Pascal, 114 
Parasitic Morality, 138 
Passover, 106 
Paul, St., and Christ, 60 
and miracles, 53 
and the Resurrection, 66, 69 
Personal assurance, 107, 149 
Personality of Jesus Christ, 57, 
58, 99, 107 
Pessimism, 102 
Physical science, 32 
has its inexplicable side, 33, 131 
Plato, 81, 98 
Pliny, 60 
Plutarch, 116 
Popular and scientific thought, 16 
Positivism, 19, 33, 114 
Powell, Baden, 135 
Precepts, Christian 
Christian, 84 
Preparation for Christ, 98, 104 
Probable evidence, 9, 100 
Psychological atmosphere, 114 
Purity, 92 


and non- 


RATIONALISM and miracles, 54, 
137 We 
Reaction against ancient modes of 
thought, 28, 30 
Religion, definition of, 14 
function of, in thought, 34 
object of, 11 
substitutes for, 118 
universality of, 11, 13, 116 
and nationality, 117 
Renan, 65, 67, 72, 104, 139 
Resurrection of Christ, 66, 68, 
141-4 
discrepancies in narrative of, 
70, 148 
evidences of, in. 
institutions, 66, 70 
theories of, 67, 71-4 
Revelation, 38, 48, 50 
as education, 42, 132 
need of, 79 


Christian 


158 


Revelation, possibility of, 39 
probability of, 39 
tests of, 40, 44 
Robert Elsmere, 54 
Romanes, G. J., Candid Hxamina- 
tion of Theism, PIG) 156 
Rede Lecture, 127 
Thoughts on Religion, 28, 33, 
54, 37,51; O27 80M lle. This 
128, 132, 135, 140, 145, 150 
Rousseau, 60, 141 


SALVATION, Christian view of, 77 
Scepticism, sadness of, 50, 136 
strategy of, 101 
Schelling, 118 
Science, limitations of, 131 
and Christianity, 4 
and religion, 23, 25, 123 seq. 
Scripture a revelation, 40, 45 
Secularism, 19 
Sentiment against Miracles, 47, 54 
Sexes, relations of, and Christi- 
-anity, 148 
Shairp, Studies in Poetry and 
Philosophy, 83 
Slavery and Christianity, 88, 93 
Socrates, 80, 104 
Spencer, Herbert, 19, 149 
Stanley, Dean, 58 
Stoics, 80, 82 
Strauss, 72, 104, 114, 140 


a 


HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 


Substitutes for religion, 14, 118 © : 


Supernatural Religion, 59 


TALMUD, ethics of the, 85 


Telemachus and the Gladiators, 94 
Testimonies to the character and — 


teaching of Christ, 58, 139 — 
Theism, 128 
Definitions of, 15, 129 
Theistic arguments, 12, 17, 120 


Theories of the Resurrection, 67, — 


al 
Thought, argument 
necessity of, 120 
Trinity, monistic, 125 


from 


UNIQUENESS of Christianity, 98, j 


101 


| Universality of religion, 11, 13, 7 


116 
Utilitarianism, 55 


VEDAS, the, 80 
Vinet, 112 


Vision theory of the Resurte a 3 


«67, 72 


War, 88, 96 
Wilkins, Light of the World, 109, 
146 


Woman, position of, under Papal i 
ism and Christianity, 87, 91 


THE END 


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